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PARISH EDUCATION IN 
COLONIAL VIRGINIA 


By 
GUY FRED WELLS, Pu.D. 


TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EpucaTION, No. 138 


Published by 
Ceachers College, Columbia GAnibersitp 
New York City 
1923 


ee ORCC 
RAO RO YO We } 
AV AOR 


Copyright 1923 by Guy Fred Wells 


©cock 23 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


The author of this study is indebted to Professor Paul Monroe for 
suggesting its subject and for assisting in the work of locating sources 
and organizing material. He is under obligation to several of the 
ministers of the Episcopal Church in Virginia who aided in the search 
for parish vestry books and gave access to those in their possession. 
Acknowledgment should also be made of the courtesy of the librarian 
at the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia, in 
making available for examination the collection of parish records in 
her keeping. 


YOM 
Pantene sei v 
At I Gh Vy 7 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 


WA RE GRA TIDES UIE re LANE AMAL OO A 1 
Pe aristtith, COlOMALN VITOINIA |) cava; cls cay vinve aid ase oinrviass 3 
II. Three Types of Parish Educational Activity............ 17 
AM UAIMO WER ALIS OCODOOIS atl cays Wisin darate Racal elim a apt Us 30 
LV: Education TMVeNe Parish ys WOrKNOUSE. yee nat ama a) Or 58 
MAE OTIS A TDLETIICOSUIT) 9. evete shut yrs evo chatae dosel ear ciaisicr tel «6 70 
CE ATES Tan) TO 8 90 
Des Tel havea eee) | aii.) CNet Beaay s eey ARAN Rea nee AON Pepa AT 0) ta 93 


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INTRODUCTION 


Public participation in education in England at the time of the 
settlement of the American colonies consisted chiefly in the pro- 
visions for instructing the poor which were made by the parishes as 
the governmental organizations responsible for the care of dependents. 
There was little uniformity of practice among the parishes, but it 
was not unusual for one to supply a teacher, provide a school room, 
pay for the tuition of poor children in a private school, or conduct a 
workhouse in which instruction was given. In rare instances a school 
was established and supported out of the rates. Probably no single 
parish used all these means of aiding in the education of its poor 
children, and many may have made no provision whatever, but the 
use of parish funds for educational purposes was sufficiently common 
to furnish the colonists in America with a definite precedent in public 
support.! 

With the English custom as a basis, the New England towns, 
which had their origin in the parishes of the mother country, estab- 
lished schools for all classes of children. Their action was due to 
a combination of favoring circumstances, which besides the precedents 
included the compact settlement in towns, an approximate equality 
of status among the inhabitants, a uniformity of religious belief 
which embraced the doctrine that all should be able to read the Bible, 
and a relatively high average of intelligence. 

The factors in the situation in New England which brought about 
the establishment of public schools for all children did not exist 
together in any other section of the country. In Virginia the social 
and economic distinctions and the wide distribution of the population 
made impossible the development of common schools, but a consider- 
ation of the general conformity of ideas and institutions in the colony 
to those in England makes it seem reasonable to presume that in 
education the familiar custom of providing more or less adequately 


1For a discussion of English precedents see Fish, C. R., ‘'The English Parish 
and Education at the Beginning of American Colonization,’”’ School Review, 
Vol. XXIII, p. 438. 


2 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


for the poor by means of organized public effort was followed, and 
that as in England the parishes took most of the responsibility for 
the work. 

While there has hitherto been no systematic study of the matter, 
various students of the history of colonial Virginia have found evi- 
dences in the records showing that in fact the parishes made at least 
a small provision for the education of poor children. The present 
investigation has been undertaken with the purpose of determining 
the nature of the educational means employed by the parishes and 
of measuring the success of the efforts made. We shall be concerned 
with a type of public education which, it may be assumed at the out- 
set, was like that in England, but which was adapted to a greater 
or less degree to suit the conditions peculiar to the colony. The fact 
that the practice in Virginia was in some measure based on that in 
England, whether there was close conformity or not, makes it desir- 
able that we should gain an understanding of the English custom 
before undertaking the study of the different educational means em- 
ployed by the parishes in the colony. Accordingly, the study of 
each type of activity will be prefaced by a consideration of English 
precedent. In order that the data found in the sources may be in- 
terpreted properly it is necessary first of all to examine into the 
character of parish government. 


2The following are typical statements concerning parish activity in education: 
‘‘The providence of the parish system is indicated in the appointed duty of the 
vestrymen in binding out pauper children, to require by contract that they 
should have three years’ schooling’? (Brock, The Colonial Virginian, p. 17). 
“Every parish had its school’’ (Brock, p. 127). ‘‘And there werealso many free 
schools, parish schools, and private schools” (Tyler, Williamsburg The Old Colonial 
Capital, p. 112). ‘‘There was in 1646 a considerable amount of compulsory 
primary education, much more than is generally supposed, since the records of it 
have been buried in the parish vestry books’’ (Fiske, Old Virginia and Her 
Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 246). 


CHAPTER I 


THE PARISH IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA 


The parish in colonial Virginia, like its English model, was a local 
governmental institution which administered both church and civil 
affairs without a distinction being made between the two fields of 
activity in either law or custom.! Looking at the matter from the 
standpoint of the present, the ecclesiastical activities of the parish 
consisted in the control of church business and the oversight of be- 
havior involving religious observances. The civil functions included 
the care of the poor, the inspection of morals, and the management 
of a number of more exclusively secular concerns like the procession- 
ing of the bounds of lands and the counting of tobacco plants. Activ- 
ity of the secular type was limited by the fact that the county was 
also a local governmental unit, but probably the chief reason for 
the parish not becoming a more important civil institution is that 
the wide distribution of the population kept down the number of 
community enterprises such as those with which the New England 
town was concerned. 

Consideration of the organization of parish government and the 
functions of its officers may be based on selections from the statutes 
appearing in the code of 1661-62 which remained in force without 
essential change except by way of addition of certain civil obligations. 

ActII. That for the making & proportioning the levyes and assessments for 
building and repayring the churches, and chappells, provision for the poore, 
maintenance of the minister, and such other necessary duties for the more orderly 
manageing of all parociall affaires, Be 1t enacted that twelve of the most able men 
of each parish be by the major part of the said parish chosen to be vestrymen out 
of which number the minister and vestry to make choice of two churchwardens 
yearly, as alsoe, in the case of death of any vestryman or his departure out of the 


parish, that the said minister and vestry make choice of another to supply his 
roome, and be it further enacied, that none shall be admitted to be of the vestry 


1The New England town also had its origin in the English parish. In many 
English parishes the vestry minutes show that in the 17th century it was the custom 
to use the term ‘‘town meeting” instead of ‘‘vestry meeting’? (Webb, English 
Local Government, p. 39). 


4 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


that doe not take the oath of allegiance and supremacy to his majesty and sub- 
scribe to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. 


Act III. That the churchwardens shall twice every yeare (viz.) in December 
court and April court deliver a true presentment in writing of such misdemeanors 
as to their knowledge, or by common fame have beene committed whilst they have 


been churchwardens. 
Here is given a list of moral and religious misdemeanors including 
swearing, sabbath abusing, drunkenness, slander, and adultery. 


Act XIV. And be it further enacied That the said churchwardens take care and 
be impowered during their churchwardenship to keepe the churchin repaire 
provide books and ornaments. . . and that they the said churchwardens doe 
faithfully collect the ministers dues, cause them to be brought to convenient 
places and honestly pay them, and that of all the disbursements and receipts they 
give a true account to the vestry when by them required.? 


THE RELATION OF VESTRY AND WARDENS 


The above regulations do not indicate clearly the intended rela- 
tion between the wardens and the vestry, for while the vestry was 
made responsible for the election of the wardens and for “‘the more 
orderly manageing of all parociall affaires,’’ the wardens were given 
apparently independent obligations without any suggestion of their 
subordination to the vestry except that they should submit their 
accounts when called upon to do so. The probability is that the 
legislators had in mind no definite theory of division of power, and 
that in giving the wardens a status of apparent independence they 
were moved merely by a knowledge of English custom and a consider- 
ation of the necessity of having certain officers representative of the 
parish and vestry who could be held directly responsible for the 
execution of important functions more readily than the vestry as a 
whole.’ 

Whatever was the intention back of the laws, the important fact 
is that in practice the vestries did not hesitate to assume the initiative 
in the exercise of any of the functions of parish government and order 
the wardens to take the action they determined upon, regardless of 
the evident meaning of the law. As a typical instance showing the 
control often exercised by the vestry over the wardens even in the 


*Hening, Statutes at Large, II, pp. 43-45. 
*In England the vestry was compelled to vote the taxes to defray expenses in- 
curred by the wardens in the care of the church and the poor (Webb, English 


Local Government, p. 39). 


The Parish in Colontal Virginia 5 


conduct of minor church business which in law was given to the war- 
dens, there is an order of the vestry of St. Mark’s Parish requiring 
the wardens to buy two prayer books.4 The fact that the wardens 
were chosen by their associates in the vestry, a close corporation, 
and that the vestry was responsible for voting taxes, no doubt tended 
to make them merely representative or executive officials. This does 
not mean that they seldom exercised initiative or that they could not 
be punished by the county court for failure to carry out their obliga- 
tions as indicated in the law. It merely means that in practice they 
were subject to vestry control, that what they did was with the 
understood allowance of the vestry, and that they might be given 
detailed directions or allowed considerable freedom. 


THE VESTRY 


The provision in the law of 1661-62 that the membership of the 
vestry should be made up “‘of the most able men of each parish,” 
while of little real force in itself, was generally adhered to under the 
favoring circumstances of the situation, as is suggested by the fact 
that practically all the prominent Virginians were at one time or 
another and often for long periods members of the vestry in their 
respective parishes.> <A typical case is that of George Washington, 
who was elected to membership in the Truro Parish vestry in 1762.° 
In the choice of twelve as the appropriate number of men to constitute 
a vestry there is very probably a reflection of the practice followed 
in certain parts of rural England in the seventeenth century, al- 
though consideration was no douht given to the fact that this number , 
secured adequate representation of the parish without making the 
vestry so large as to be unwieldy.’ 


‘Slaughter, St. Mark’s Parish, p. 33. 

5Truro Parish in Westmoreland County in its early history furnishes an ex- 
ception to the general rule both as to qualifications and number of men in the 
vestry. In 1744 there were sixteen men present at the vestry meeting, and in 
that year Lawrence Washington sent a protest to the Assembly against the 
vestry, complaining that they were not able to read and write and were not 
otherwise qualified. Asa result the vestry was dissolved and a new body elected 
(Hening, V, pp. 274-75; Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 20). The record 
of Kingston Parish in Gloucester County, which beginsin 1679, shows the attend- 
ance at the vestry meeting of the vestrymen and ‘‘Inhabitants.”’ 

6*1762, October 25th. Ordered, that George Washington Esqr. be chosen one 
of the Vestrymen of this Parish in the room of William Pecke Gent. deceased”’ 
(Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 122). 

™Webb, in his English Local Government, p. 179, says: In the counties of North- 
umberland and Durham we find the parish government, for the past three cen- 
turies, normally in the hands of a body known as “The Four-and-Twenty”’ (or 


6 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


The vestry was made a self-perpetuating body by the regulation 
in Act II, quoted above, which deals with the filling of vacancies, and 
there was no deviation from this arrangement except when some 
special circumstance like the changing of the bounds of a parish or 
the illegal acts of the vestry made it necessary for the Assembly to 
dissolve the vestry and to hold a new election. Bacon’s Assembly 
in 1676 endeavored to change the custom by providing for the election 
of vestrymen every three years, but the law enacted was repealed in 
the following year upon Berkeley’s return to power, and the statute 
of 1661-62 remained in force.* There is no evidence to show that after 
Bacon’s time there was any protest against the system of parish 
government which kept the control in the hands of an oligarchy, but 
it must have seemed oppressive to many in the middle and lower 
classes not represented in the vestry.1° While in England only a 


occasionally, ‘‘The Twelve’’). . . .The number twelve seems to have been less 
usual than twenty-four. It occurs in Durham, at Pittington, and Stainton; 
and in Northumberland, at Haltwhistle; and at Bywell St. Andrew. 

8In 1757 the vestry of Dettingen Parish was dissolved and an election ordered 
because the vestry had “‘been guilty of many illegal practices very oppressive to 
the inhabitants’’ (Hening, VII, 145). 

What was the general practice in conducting the parish elections cannot be 
determined from the parish records. When Truro Parish was divided in 1765 
what was in effect a primary was first held, and then later there was an election 
in which those who had received the largest number of votes in the primary 
were voted upon, each man being allowed to vote for twelve. The original record 
of this election, now in the Congressional Library, was kept by George 
Washington (Slaughter, History of Truro Parish, p. 44). 

*Hening, II, 380. 

10That the vestries were close corporations is the view generally held by writers 
on Virginia colonial history, but Bruce, who is the leading authority on Virginia in 
the 17th century, holds that in the early part of the colonial period the vestries 
were elected at intervals by the inhabitants, and that this was the practice after 
Bacon’s Rebellion down to the end of the 17th century at least. In his Imstd- 
tutional History of Virginia in the 17th Century, Vol. I, p. 67, he says that before 
Bacon’s time the vestries had assumed the power of cooption, but that after the 
pacification of the Colony in 1677, ‘‘the power of self-perpetuation without popular 
elections at intervals, to which apparently they had no real claim either in law or 
custom, seems to have passed from the vestries.’’ He further states that ‘‘at 
the end of the century, the vestries were chosen by the suffrage of the freeholders 
and householders; but in the intervals between the elections of the entire body by 
a popular vote’’ the vestrymen could fill the vacancies caused by death or re- 
moval from the parish (p. 70), implying that it was the custom at the end of the 
century to have occasional elections. 

Beverley, writing on the situation at the end of the 17th century, says, ‘‘These 
Vestries consist of twelve Gentlemen of the Parish, and were at first chosen by 
the vote of the Parishioners; but upon the Death of any, have been continued by 
the Survivors electing another in his place’’ (History of Virginia, p. 227). In 
The Present State of Virginia, written by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair in 1697, 
it is stated that the vestries ‘‘have a power to continue themselves, for as one 
dyes or removes out of the Parish, the remaining Vestrymen chuse another in 
his room’’ (p. 65). 

With reference to the law, to which Bruce refers as being opposed to the idea of 


The Parish in Colonial Virginia 7 


relatively few paid parish taxes,!! in Virginia all freemen above the 
age of sixteen were levied upon. 

In the management of church affairs the vestry took care of the 
matters delegated to it in the laws of 1661-62, which have been quoted, 
and in addition it chose the minister and readers, bought and equipped 
the minister’s glebe, and to a greater or less extent directed the 
wardens in the exercise of the ecclesiastical functions delegated in 
law to them. The chief civil responsibilities of the vestry were the 
laying of the parish levy and the care of the poor. Each fall it voted 
a tax to cover parish expenses, the larger share of which ordinarily 
went to the payment of the minister and to poor support.” Although 
in England the wardens with the overseers of the poor were the 
responsible poor law officials with power to levy a rate for the poor 
without vestry control, in Virginia they acted as representatives of 
the vestry. Late in the colonial period a number of vestries estab- 
lished workhouses for the care and employment of the poor.’ 

There were laws enacted after 1662 specifically empowering the 
wardens to bind out illegitimate children upon their own responsi- 
bility and also poor, neglected children upon certificate from the 
county court, but the vestry books show that wherever the vestries 


a close vestry, it may be said that the law of 1661-62 above quoted gave lega 
justification for cooption. It was this law which Bacon changed, and ifit had not 
been the custom before he obtained control there would have been no occasion 
for changing the law. That the close vestry was very common in England is 
demonstrated by Webb (Exglish Local Government, pp. 175-76). After showing 
that there were many variations in the organization of parish government in 
England, he says with reference to the close vestry in certain counties, ‘It may 
almost be described as the typical form of parish government in town and country 
alike’ (p. 175). 

As evidence that vestries in Virginia were not self-perpetuating after 1677, 
Bruce refers to two cases, that of North Farnham Parish and a parish in North- 
ampton County. He says, “In 1692 the justices of Rappahannock appointed a 
day for the inhabitants of North Farnham Parish’ to assemble for a popular 
election (p.68). In 1692 Rappahannock County was discontinued and Richmond 
and Essex made out of it. This reorganization probably meant some change in 
the boundaries of the parishes involved, and in any case it was the occasion for 
the election. The special occasion for the election of a vestry in the parish in 
Northampton County in 1691 was that two parishes wh.ch had existed separately 
after 1642 were reunited in 1691 (Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 258). Itcanreadily 
be seen that neither of the two cases mentioned serves as a basis for the view that 
after 1677 the vestries were commonly chosen by popular election. 

UWebb, English Local Government, p. 48. y 

2The vestry books show that ordinarily the vestrymen were much interested 
in the welfare of the indigent poor, but occasionally toward the end of the colonial 
period records like the following appear: ‘‘Order’d That the Churchwardens do 
let ean poor of this parish to the lowest bidder’’ (Bristol Parish Vestry Book, 
p. 182). 

See Chapter IV. 


8 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


wished they considered the cases and ordered the wardens to act in 
accordance with their decision. This was justified by the general 
principle that the wardens were subject to vestry control, and by the 
fact that the vestry was responsible for the care of the poor and for 
parish finances. The vestry also often ordered the apprenticing of 
orphans, although the laws provided that this duty should be per- 
formed by the county court. There was no statute giving the vestry 
the right to provide out of parish funds for the schooling of poor 
children, but this was occasionally done, and as in England, it is 
probable that there would have been no legal interference if a vestry 
had consistently made expenditure for the purpose. 

One of the important duties of the vestry was to appoint men 
every four years to go over the bounds of estates and renew the 
marks. In some of the vestry books the record of processionings 
takes up more space than any other item. A law of 1723 required 
the vestries to divide the parishes into precincts and appoint men 
in each to examine the growing tobacco and make certain that the 
quality was being maintained. The highways were in charge of 
county surveyors who were appointed by the justices, but the vestries 
were enjoined to order the parishioners to supply men to aid the 
surveyors. 

The vestry books contain numerous illustrations of the fact that 
in the exercise of civil functions the vestries went beyond the powers 
specifically delegated to them in law. The vestry of St. Paul’s 
Parish in Hanover County in 1707 built an almshouse; Bristol 
Parish Vestry in 1732 ‘‘Order’d that a Causeway be Built from the 
Ferry Landing to the Chanell on the South Side,” and in 1766 it fined 
a man “for selling Corn by unlawful measure;’’!® the vestry of Upper 
Parish in Nansemond County in 1769 paid ‘‘to Samuel Wallis for 
schooling some poor children’ six pounds.” 

The work of presenting cases of moral or religious delinquency was 
generally left in the hands of the wardens, although there is sufficient 
evidence to show that when it seemed advisable to the vestry it first 
examined the facts of a case and then ordered the wardens to act as 
it determined.!8 In St Peter’s Parish in 1734 the vestry took upon 
itself not only the accusation but also the punishment of offenders 


MHening, II, 101. 

IMS. vestry minutes of St. Paul’s leis? for 1707. 
‘WBristol Parish vestry book, pp. 61, 

17Upper Parish MS. vestry book, aii for 1769. 
18Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, 82. 


The Parish in Colonial Virginia 9 


against church decorum and ordered the wardens to ‘‘cause a good 
and substantial Pair of Stocks to be forthwith erected near the 
Church-Yard Wall.’’!® Inthe eighteenth century there was generally 
less concern over the misdemeanors listed in the law of 1661-62 than 
there had been before,?® and the grand jury took from the parish 
officials the responsibility for the more serious offenses.” 


THE CHURCH WARDENS 


It has been shown that in general the wardens acted as represen- 
tatives of the vestry, and that the position of independence which 
Acts XIII and XIV in the code of 1661-62 seemed to give them was 
in practice not held, for it was always qualified by the right of the 
vestry to direct them. In the ordinary course of events the wardens, 
after their election in the fall meeting, collected the parish levy of 
tobacco,” paid the parish servants and the people who had taken 
care of the poor during the year just ended, and made other expendi- 
tures which had been sanctioned by the vestry. They carried out 
the orders of the vestry with regard to placing of the poor for the 
year, ordered brought before them for indenturing the children whose 
apprenticeship had been ordered by the vestry or court, and presented 
to the county court the names of persons who were judged by them- 
selves or the vestry to be presumably guilty of moral or religious 
offense. Whatever other orders were made by the vestry with 
regard to the repair or the equipment of the churches, chapels, or 
glebe buildings, or any other matter were carried out. 

During the course of the year the wardens extended aid to the 
poor in cases of emergency for which provision had not been made. 
At the spring vestry meeting in some parishes they made up their 
accounts with the vestry. In preparation for the fall meeting at the 
end of the year of service they prepared a list of parish expenses to 
be submitted to the vestry, and either at this meeting or the one 
held in the spring they probably turned over to the vestry clerk the 
apprenticeship indentures and other contracts to which they had been 
~ 19St, Peter's Parish MS. vestry minutes, p. 170. 

20See The Present State of Virginia, by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, p. 66; 
Autobiography of Devereux Jarratt, p. 21; ‘Journal of Philip Fithian,’’ Amer. 
Hist. Rev., V, p. 7 

“Ingle, E., Local Institutions of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 
1885, p. 70. 

2In some parishes, particularly toward the end of the colonial period, the ves- 
tries appointed the county sheriff as parish tax collector. In St. Paul’s Parish in 


1706 it was ‘“‘Ordered that Capt. Roger Thompson, high sheriff for the present 
year of New Kent County, collect the parish Tob.’’ (MS. vestry minutes, p. 14). 


Io Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 


a party. If the vestry or wardens were accused by the court of 
some delinquency in carrying out the laws the wardens might be 
called before the court to answer the charge. 


SERVANTS OF THE PARISH 


Each parish had as paid minor officers a vestry clerk, 
one or more readers, and one or more sextons.?* The vestry clerk 
kept the vestry records, and the sextons performed the duties usually 
associated with their office. The parish church and each of the 
chapels, which were built for the convenience of the parishioners living 
in the outlying districts, had a lay reader to read the service in the 
absence of the minister, who conducted service alternately in the 
different places of worship.“ In indicating the custom in 1705, 
Beverley said, 

If a parish be of greater Extent than ordinary, it hath generally a Chapel of 
Ease; and some of the Parishes have two Such Chapels, besides the church for the 
greater convenience of the Parishioners. In these Chapels the Minister preaches 
alternately, always leaving a Reader, to Read Prayers when he can’t attend 
himself. 

Although the reader’s primary function was to act as a minister’s 
substitute in his absence or in case of vacancy in the ministerial office, 
he sometimes, and perhaps usually, assisted in the performance of 
the service when the minister was present. He also more or less 
often kept the parish register of births, marriages, and deaths, took 
immediate responsibility for the care of his chapel, and catechized 
children and servants. As assistant his work was like that of the 
parish clerk in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
and in fact he was often referred to as ‘‘the clerk.’ A typical illustra- 
tion of the use of the term “‘clerk’’ in reference to the reader is found 


Occasionally the offices of vestry clerk, reader, and sexton were held by one 
person. For instance in Bristol Parish in 1762 the vestry ordered the payment of 
2400 pounds of tobacco as a year’s salary ‘‘To William Yarbrough Clk of the 
Brick Church, Vestry and Sexton’”’ (Bristol Parish Vestry Book, p. 183). 

*4In the early days parishes had only one reader, but in the eighteenth century, 
as the number of chapels was increased, the larger and more populous among 
them sometimes had as many as four. 

**Beverley, Robert, History of Virginia, p. 226. 

*6The parish clerk in England held an office “halfway between that of a curate 
anda church menial.’’ In the 15th and 16th centuries he was commonly a cleric 
whose main duty it was to serve as general assistant to the minister or priest. 
He took a minor part in the church service, arrayed the shoulders of the minister 
with the surplice, sometimes acted as bell-ringer, and performed other menial 
duties. In the 17th century the position of parish clerk came to be filled more 
and more often by an uneducated layman, and finally in 1739 the court definitely 
held that he was a temporal officer (Webb, English Local Government, pp. 32-33). 


The Parish in Colonial Virginia II 


in the following quotation from Hugh Jones’ Present State of Virginia. 

The clerk in case of the minister’s death or absence has great business, and is a 
kind of curate, performing frequently all of the offices of the church, except the 
two sacraments and matrimony; ...In some places they read the lessons, 
publish the banns, ec. when the minister is present, for his ease; which first may 
not be improper in very hot weather, or if the minister be sick or infirm, if the 
clerk can read tolerably well... .?7 

Because of the fact that the reader was often referred to as ‘‘the 
clerk,’”’ it has been understood by some that he was usually a trained 
cleric or a young man studying for orders, and with this understanding 
as a basis it has been assumed that during the week in his spare time 
he acted as a public parish teacher. The possibility of his having 
served as a teacher makes it necessary, in an inquiry into parish 
educational activity, to examine somewhat carefully into his status. 
In fact there is nothing to show that the reader or clerk was more 
than an ordinary layman with some regular secular occupation, whose 
work in conducting Sunday service or assisting the minister was a 
minor interest. Bishop Meade, who made a most careful study of 
the Church in the colonial period, makes no mention of the clerk as 
a trained cleric except in three or four cases where the circumstances 
were unusual and the arrangements temporary.*® One of the very 
few cases which have been found is that of Nathaniel Eaton, the 
first head of Harvard College, who came to Accomac after his dis- 
missal from Harvard in 1639 and served there for a time as parish 
clerk.?? 


27 Present State of Virginia (1725), p. 67. Another typical illustration of the use 
of the term is found in the diary of Philip Fithian (‘‘Journal of Philip Fithian,” 
Amer. Hist. Rev., V, p. 294). Fithian said that it was customary for the gentle- 
men to go into church in a body after the service had begun, and that he had 
“known the clerk to come out and call them in to prayers.”’ 

The only reference to the clerk or reader as a ‘‘parish clerk’’ found in the course 
of the present study occurs in a memorandum of Governor Nicholson: ‘‘A small 
encouragem’t to the Parish Clerk or reader may perhaps enable him to keep such 
a school” (Va. Mag. of Htst. and Biog., VII, p. 157). 

28Meade, Old Churches and Famzulies of Virginia. 

22Wise, J. C., Early History of the Eastern Shore, p. 261. 

The idea that there were in colonial Virginia many young clerics who might 
be supposed to have acted as minister’s assistant is suggested in ‘A List of 
Emigrant Ministers to America,’’ compiled by Gerald Fothergill from the books 
of the Lords of the Treasury. The list contains the names of some 1200 men who 
went to America between 1690 and 1811, each of whom received from the Treasury 
20£ as passage money. In many cases the word “‘clerk’’ appears after the name of 
a recipient, and it might be understood that where this occurs we have the name 
of a man who was not an ordained minister, but one who, possibly as a deacon, 
came over to act as a parish clerk or assistant to a minister. ‘‘Clerk’’ as used in 
this connection, however, indicated only that the person to whom it was applied 
belonged to the clerical profession. Following are illustrations of its use in this 


12 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


The moral qualifications of the reader are indicated in a law 
appearing in the code of 1661-62: 

That every parish not haveing a minister to officiate every Sunday make 
choice of a grave and sober person of good life and conversation to read divine 
service every intervening Sunday at the Parish church, when the minister 
preacheth at any other place.*° 

The ability to read acceptably was implied, and it is very probable 
that in making a choice from among candidates who were orthodox 
and morally qualified this was the distinguishing trait considered, as 
is suggested by the following record from the Bristol Parish vestry 
book: 

Ordered that Nathaniell Parrott be Discontinued as Clerk of Sapponie 
Chapple and That there be a publick Notice given for persons to appear at ye 
ferry Chapple To Try for ye Same on Monday ye 19th of this Instant (Nov. 12, 
1733). 

The vestrymen were evidently ‘‘To Try” candidates to determine 
their reading ability. There is no direct evidence showing what was 
the custom in Virginia, but, as will be shown in Chapter II, it is very 
probable that school-masters were often chosen as readers because 


general sense. The church wardens of Elizabeth River Parish in Lower Norfolk 
County in 1645, ‘‘exhibited there presentment against Mr. Thomas Harrison, 
Clark (Parson of the Said parish) for not reading the book of common Prayer.” 
(Lower Norfolk County Court Records, quotedin Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, 
II, p. 12). Ina patent issued to Farnefold Nutt appears the following record: 
“John Farnefold, clerk, by his last will gave one hundred acres for ye usef a 
Free School’? (Northern Neck Land Book, quoted in Virginia Historical 
Magazine, I, p. 216). Farnefold was minister in St. Stephen’s Parish from 1680 
until his death in 1702 (William and Mary College Quarterly, XVII, p. 245). 
In an act passed in South Carolina in 1710-11 provision is made for the support of 
an aged minister—‘‘Whereas Atkin Williamson, Clerk, is grown so disabled with 
age, sickness, and other infirmities, that he cannot any longer attend the duty of 
his perpen functions. . . .’’ (Dalcho, History of the Episcopal Church in S. C., 
p. 454). 

Fothergill states that each man in his list was sent ‘‘to some definite cure,’’ 
but it is impossible to determine from the existing lists of ministers serving in 
Virginia just when each man took up his work. It can be shown, however, that 
a number of the 39 “‘clerks’’ mentioned by Fothergill as going to the colony were 
parish pastors within a year or two after passage money had been provided for 
them. The following are typical cases: 

“Richard Squire, clerk,’’ sailing after Nov. 30, 1702, was minister in St. Peter’s 
Parish, New Kent County, in 1703 (Meade, I, 385). 

“Yates [probably Robert Yates], clerk,” sailing after Jan. 3, 1689-99, was 
minister in Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County, in 1699 (Meade, I, 359). 

‘Patrick Falconer, clerk,” sailing after April 29, 1710, was minister in Hungar’s 
Parish in Northampton County in 1712 (Meade, I, 258). 

“‘James Robertson, clerk,’’ sailing after Jan. 15, 1717-18, was a minister in 
Virginia in 1719 (Meade, II, 393). 

_ It is certain in view of the above facts that the term ‘“‘clerk’’ was used by the 
Treasury recorder in its general sense to indicate a cleric. 
s°Hening, II, 46-47. 


The Parish in Colonial Virginia 13 


they possessed the requisite qualifications and because they were 
interested in the stipend attached to the position. 


THE NUMBER AND SIZE OF THE PARISHES 


In general the institution of new parishes followed the growth and 
spread of population. In 1649 it was reported that there were twenty 
churches in the colony, and there were probably as many parishes. *! 
In 1697 there were fifty parishes,* and at the end of the colonial 
period approximately ninety had been organized.*? 

The parishes varied much in size; some embraced two large 
counties, while others took up only one-third or one-half of a small 
county. As the density of population increased the larger parishes 
were reduced in size. The best description of the situation with 
respect to the size and population of the parishes at any time appears 
in a report to the Bishop of London made by the ministers in 1724.*4 
Although only twenty-nine were reported upon, those for which the 
facts were given were in general the older, smaller parishes. The 
average area was approximately four hundred and ten square miles, 
with an average population of somewhat over two hundred families. 
Variations in size were between fourteen hundred and one hundred 
square miles, and in number of families between four hundred and 
thirty and seventy-eight. 


THE PARISH RECORDS 


The official records of the parish government were kept in the 
“vestry book,’”’ which contained the minutes of the vestry meetings, 
the record of the processionings of the bounds of lands, and some- 
times the copies of the apprenticeship contracts to which the wardens 
were a party. There was also a “register” in which the minister or 
reader recorded births, marriages, and deaths, but this held nothing in 
regard to governmental activity. 

The minutes of the vestry meetings, kept by the vestry clerk, show 
the conclusions reached by the vestry with reference to the various 
matters which came before it, without there being any indication 
of the votes or the considerations which moved the vestry to act. 
It is usually impossible to tell which items of business were brought 
up by the wardens and which by other members of the vestry, there 


314 Perfect Description of Virginia (1649), Force Historical Tracts, II, p. 8. 
Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, The Present State of Virginia, p. 64, 

33 eade, Old Churches, Pare is 

Perry, Historical Collections, I, pp. 261-312. 


14 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


seldom being a record of the wardens’ reports to the vestry. Most 
of the minutes are in the form of orders to make expenditures in pay- 
ment of parish obligations and to provide for the poor in appropriate 
ways. Aside from the list of expenditures, the minutes record the 
number of tithables each year, the tax rate, the names of the members 
present, the appointment of officers, the arrangements made for 
constructing or repairing parish buildings, and directions given the 
wardens concerning the apprenticing of poor children. Occasionally 
there is a report of a committee, a petition to the Assembly, or the 
record of a fine received. 

In England the wardens’ account books constitute a most impor- 
tant source of information concerning parish government in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,®* but in Virginia the subjection 
of the wardens to vestry control and the fact that most of their work 
was in execution of the vestry’s orders made it unnecessary to have a 
permanent record of their activities except that contained in the 
vestry book. The apprenticeship indentures in the cases of children 
bound out by order of the vestry were ordinarily given to the vestry 
clerk for preservation or record. ‘This was sometimes, and probably 
commonly, the case where the indentures were made out “upon 
certificate’ from the county court. 

After the dissolution of parish government and the separation of 
church and state at the end of the colonial period, the vestry books 
were no longer used for recording civil business except in several 
cases where the overseers of the poor continued the accounts recording 
payments for the support of the poor, but the vestries of some of the 
Episcopal churches which were organized on the new basis kept up 
in the old books the record of church transactions. The chief practi- 
cal value of the colonial vestry books in the succeeding years was 
in the aid which the record of processionings gave in the establishment 
of land claims. Bishop Meade, who, when in pursuit of his study of 
Episcopal Church history in Virginia, made a systematic attempt to 
locate the vestry books, said in 1857, ‘“The vestry books from which 
I could have gotten much, and some of which I have seen, are, for 
the most part, either lost, or fallen into the hands of persons who use 
them for the establishment of land claims or bounties.’”” The books 
of which he obtained possession were deposited at his death in the 


Webb, English Local Government, pp. 7, 114. 


The Parish in Colonial Virginia I5 


library of the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria.** In 1880 Bishop 
Slaughter, then historiographer of the diocese of Virginia, made a 
report to the council of the Episcopal church showing the results of 
his systematic endeavor to locate the vestry books then in existence. 
He reported the location of nineteen of them, most of which were at 
Alexandria.*’ Since 1880 other vestry books have been found, making 
a total of thirty-six. Only those of Henrico Parish and Bristol 
Parish have been printed. Except in the course of the present study 
no recent systematic attempt has been made to locate the records 
or to study them as a whole. 

Below is a list of the vestry books the existence and location of 
which are known. It represents nearly half of the parishes in exist- 
ence in the latter part of the colonial period and all sections of the 
colony. Only four contain a record of parish activities before 1700. 


Albemarle in Sussex County, 1741-1784; Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria. 

Antrim in Halifax, 1752-1817; Alexandria. 

Augusta in Augusta, 1747-1780; County Clerk’s office, Staunton. 

Blissland in New Kent, 1721-1787; Alexandria. 

Bristol in Prince George, 1720-1789; library of Rev. Churchill Gibson; 
reprint edited by C. G. Chamberlayne. 

Bruton in James City; original destroyed; Church Review and Ecclesiastical 
Register, VIII, 1855-1856, gives extracts from records from 1674 on. 

Camden in Pittsylvania, 1767-1777; Mrs. M. E. Clement, Chatham, Vir- 
ginia. 

Christ Church in Lancaster, 1739-1786; Alexandria. 

Christ Church in Middlesex, 1663-1787; Alexandria. 

Cumberland in Lunenburg, 1747-1784; Alexandria. 

Dettingen in Prince William, 1748-1802; Alexandria. 

Elizabeth City in Elizabeth City, 1751-1780; Rev. C. B. Bryan, Petersburg. 

Elizabeth River in Norfolk, 1749-1761; County Clerk’s office, Norfolk. 

Frederick in Frederick, 1764-1816; Alexandria. 

Fredericksville in Louisa, 1742-1787; Alexandria. 

Henrico in Henrico, 1730-1773; in possession of vestry of St. John’s Church, 
Richmond; reprint in Wynne’s Historical Documents from the Old Dominion. 

Hungar’s in Northampton, 1634-1700; County Clerk’s office, Eastville, 
Virginia; 1754-1780, Episcopal Church rectory, Eastville. 

King William in Powhatan (later Henrico), 1707-1750; Miss Lelia Walker, 
Ft. Estell, Kentucky; translation from French, in which the record was 
kept, in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XI, XII, XIII. 

Kingston in Mathews, 1679-1796; Alexandria. 

Lexington in Amherst, 1779-1880; Alexandria. 

Linhaven in Norfolk, 1723-1779; copy in hands of Rev. C. B. Bryan, Peters- 
burg. 

% Virginia Magazine of History, Ill, p. 85. 
yeah of the 85th Annual Council of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, pp. 


Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


Lower Parish, Nansemond County, 1749-1784; County Clerk’s office. 
Newport in Isle of Wight, 1724-1776; Isle of Wight County Court House, 
Isle of Wight, Virginia. 

Petsworth in Gloucester, 1677-1793; copy in possession of Virginia Historical 
Society, Richmond. 

St. Andrew’s in Brunswick, 1746-1782; office of County Clerk, Lawrence- 
ville. 

St. George’s in Spottsylvania, 1726-1800; Episcopal rectory, Fredericksburg. 
St. James in Goochland, 1744-1860; Alexandria. 

St. Mark’s in Culpeper, 1730-1778 (record for 1753-7 torn out); Alexandria. 
St. Paul’s in Hanover and New Kent, 1755-1774; Alexandria. 

St. Peter’s in New Kent, 1686-1759; Alexandria. 

Shelburne in Loudon, 1771-1805; Alexandria. 

South Farnham in Essex, 1739-1780; Rev. W. N. Meade, Tappahannock. 
Stratton Major in King and Queen, 1729-1775; Alexandria. 

Truro in Fairfax, 1732-1782; Mt. Vernon. 

Upper Parish in Nansemond, 1744-1793; Alexandria. 

Wicomico in Northumberland, 1703-1795; Alexandria. 


CHAPTER II 
THREE TYPES OF PARISH EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY 


ENGLISH PRECEDENTS 


There was never in England a systematic scheme of parish educa- 
tion but in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries many of the parishes 
as units of church and civil government participated in one way or 
another in the work of educating their children. The types of educa- 
tional activity which have been distinguished are the establishment 
and support of a parish school, provision of a school building or room, 
the payment of tuition fees for the education of parish childrenina 
private school, apprenticeship, administration of an endowed school, 
and provision of instruction in a workhouse. While the amount of 
activity along the lines indicated has not been exactly determined, 
it is evident that the colonists in America had definite precedents for 
public participation in education in the custom of the English par- 
ishes.!. The fact that the English parish was transplanted to Virginia 
and continued without essential change naturally leads to the pre- 
sumption that its educational practices were followed to a greater or 
less degree in the colony. A knowledge of the practice in the 
mother country therefore gives some direction in the attempt to 
discover what was done in Virginia. 

In the present chapter we shall consider three types of parish 
educational activity—establishment and support of a school, pro- 
vision of a school building, and payment for tuition of poor children 
in private schools—leaving for later chapters the other kinds of effort 
which have been mentioned. 

The most common form of parish school in England in the six- 
teenth and the early part of the seventeenth century was that con- 


1The English parish records have not been systematically examined with the 
purpose of determining educational practices. De Montmorency, in his State 
Interference in English Education, page 191, states a view with regard to the 
matter which is held by various authorities: ‘A systematic search of vestry 
records and the accounts of churchwardens and overseers would most probably 
show some very remarkable facts in relation to education.” 


17 


18 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


ducted by the parish clerk who was then usually a clerical assistant 
of the minister.2, In 1571 the Bishop of York enjoined that within 
his diocese, 
no parish clerk be appointed against the good will of the parson... and 
that he endeavor himself to teach young children to read, if he is able so to do.’ 

Leach accepts the view expressed by a writer at the end of the 
seventeenth century that it was one of the understood duties of the 
parish clerk “‘to instruct children in reading and writing and re- 
hearsing the catechism.’ Watson refers to Mulcaster’s statement, 
“if the chancel have a minister the belfry hath a master,’’® and inter- 
prets it to mean that parish clerks often acted as schoolmasters and 
that they sometimes used the belfry as a schoolroom. Where it was 
assumed that teaching was a regular duty of the clerk he was not paid 
for the service, which accounts for the general lack of reference to 
his work in the vestry books and the wardens’ accounts. Occasion- 
ally, however, there is record of payment. For instance the parish 
of St. Michael in Cornhill in 1569 paid ‘‘the clerk yt teacheth chyldren 
Boiss ie 

Some of the parishes employed a person who had no official con- 
nection with the church to teach their children. Occasionally in 
addition to the teacher a parish provided the school building or 
room, thus maintaining a public school in the modern sense except 
for the fact that the arrangements were made primarily for the poor. 
It was probably a more common practice, however, to hire a teacher 
who conducted the school in his or her own school room. In 1636 
the wardens and vestry at Cartmel ordered ‘That Christopher 
Barrow come to teach school at the ancient wages.’” 

The vestry minutes of a Westminster parish contain the following 
record: 


Sunday, the 18th of Decr. 1681—The Peticon of Thomas Jordan praying that he 
may be settled and continued in the Imployment of instructing the parish Poore 
Children being this day read was laid aside. .... 


In Jordan’s place Judith Smith was hired, 


*When in the seventeenth century it became customary to appoint laymen, 
often uneducated, to the position of clerk it is probable that teaching as one of the 
functions of the office was discontinued. 

SAtchley, C., The Parish Clerk, p. 21. 

‘Leach, A. F., Article on church schools in Monroe’s Cyclopedia of Education. 

5English Grammar Schools to 1660, p. 154. 

yee C. R., “The English Parish and Education,” School Review, XXIII, 
p. ; 

"Fish, above citation, p. 446. 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 19 


as a fit person to undertake the Teaching of the said Poore children which was 
accordingly conferred upon her.’ 

The Leeds Parish vestry provided for the maintenance of a free 
school at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At about the 
same time St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields set up a school in which poor 
children were maintained and taught.!2 The Woolwich vestry in 
1731 had under its control a schoolmaster."! 

In numerous cases a parish provided a schoolhouse for a private 
teacher. At Eltham in 1635 the parish built a school building.” 
At Ashburton in 1573 the minister paid “‘x s. iii d. for the occupation 
of the church house . . . for the keeping of scule there.’ The 
church wardens’ accounts of Minchinhampton for 1651 record pay- 
ment “for stones and making the chimnie in the chansell for the 
scogie, 1 

It seems to have been a common practice for parishes to pay for 
the tuition of poor children in private schools. In 1622 the justices 
of Aylesham and Reipham in Norfolk County ordered, 


That poore children be put to Schoole to knittinge and spinninge dames, and 
the churchwardens and Overseers of the poore to paie the School dames their 
wages, where the parents are not able. 


In 1628, at Dorchester, it was, 


agreed that henceforth there shall be paid to the schoolmaster of the said new 
school founded in Holy Trinity Parish 12 d., every quarter for every poor child 
of the three parishes of this borough that shall be placed at school with him by 
the overseers of the poor ... to be paid by the overseers every one of them for 
the poor of their own parish.!6 


The church wardens’ accounts at Darlington for 1653 and 1655 
contain the following items: ‘‘Edward Holmes a poor scholar at the 
Petit School for half-year’s teaching 3 s. 3 d.”; “Roger Jewett one 
quarter’s wage for learning a boy 1/ -’”: ‘‘Dame Seamer for her 
wages for teaching a boy one year 4/-”; ‘‘Ralph Hall for 3 lads one 
quarter 4/ -’; Mr. Swinburne for learning John Wilson’s children 
and Giles’ daughter’s child 7/ -.”!” The vestry of a parish in the 


8DeMontmorency, State Interference in English Education, p. 191. 

8Webb, English Local Government, p. 50. 

Wihid., p. 236. 

Hibid., p. 131. 

2Lysons, Environs of London, p. 417. 

BFish, “The English Parish and Education,’’ School Review, XXIII, 443, 
MTbid., p. 443. 

Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 332. 

16Rish, p. 448. 

Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 158. 


20 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 


city of Westminster in 1671 paid a school dame two shillings, six 
pence a week for three weeks “‘for teaching the parish children.’’!® 
In the parish of Stepney, Limhouse Hamlet, in 1732 the children in 
the parish workhouse were ‘‘sent to a school in the Neighborhood, 
at the Publick charge’ until eight years of age.!® 

In whatever form the educational interest of the parish in Eng- 
land expressed itself, the activity undertaken had as its primary 
purpose the provision of facilities for the instruction of the poor. 
It is likely, however, that in few cases were the provisions sufficient 
to secure the education of all the poor children in a locality. 


THE PRACTICE IN VIRGINIA 


PARISH READERS OR CLERKS AS TEACHERS 


It was indicated in Chapter I in the discussion of parish officers 
and their functions that the readers or clerks who served in the 
Virginia parishes were laymen corresponding to the English parish 
clerks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was further 
pointed out that they sometimes taught elementary schools. Should 
we understand that they taught school as a recognized part of their 
service to the parish, thus reflecting the earlier English practice which 
has been described, or that they engaged in teaching as a purely private 
undertaking? 

There was nothing in the law defining the duties of the readers 
which suggests that they should conduct schools for secular instruc- 
tion, and outside of the law there is little direct evidence bearing on 
the matter. The readers no doubt ordinarily possessed the simple 
qualifications required of teachers of reading and writing schools, 
that is, they were orthodox, they were “‘of good life and conversation,” 
and they could read and write. That in the minds of the people of 
the time they commonly met the requirements for teachers is shown 
in contemporary writings. In 1696 Governor Nicholson made out 
a list of topics which he wanted Commissary Blair to take up with 
the authorities in England. One had to do with the “‘great scarcity 
of Ministers and Schoolmasters,’”’ another with the development of 
towns. In reference to towns and the provision of schools the fol- 
lowing memorandum appears: 


If towns go forwards that a schoolmaster be maintained in every town at 
18Webb, English Local Government, I, p. 50. 
194m Account of Several Workhouses, p. 68. 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 21 


least for teaching to read English and writing. A small encouragem’t to the 
Parish Clerk or reader may perhaps enable him to keep such a school.?° 

In Hugh Jones’ account of conditions in Virginia in the first part 
of the eighteenth century there is a similar reference to the possession 
of teaching qualifications by the readers, although there is an indica- 
tion that some may not have had the capacity: 

In most parishes are schools (little Houses being built on Purpose) where are 
taught English and Writing; but to prevent the sowing of the Seeds of Dissention 
and Faction it is to be wished that the Masters or Mistresses should be such as are 
approved or licensed by the Minister and Vestry of the Parish or justices of the 
County, the Clerks of the Parishes being most proper for this Purpose or (in 
case of their incapacity or refusal) such others as can best be procured.”! 

Although the statements quoted above show sufficiently well that 
the readers were commonly looked upon as having the qualifications 
for teaching, they show that it was not a regular custom for them to 
engage in the work, for if it had been there would have been no occasion 
for the propositions made. In various writings on colonial education 
in Virginia, however, it is asserted that the readers taught. Bruce 
says that in the seventeenth century, ‘“‘The readers . . . very frequently 
performed the duties of teachers in countryside schools.” Maddox 
says that the clerks of the parishes ‘‘were undoubtedly a main source 
of supply of elementary school teachers.’’ He assumes, mistakenly, 
that the clerk or reader was a cleric, and says that ‘‘in the main he 
must have had more time and necessity to devote to teaching than 
had the minister himself.’’* The inference logically drawn from 
these and similar statements is that the readers taught school because 
the work naturally devolved upon them as parish servants who 
possessed the requisite qualifications and who had time for the work 
left over after caring for their regular church duties. Neither Bruce 
nor Maddox, however, offers any direct evidence showing that a 
reader ever taught. That the view implied in the statements of 
the authors quoted is mistaken is shown conclusively by the fact 
that in the vestry books there is no reference to the work of readers 
as teachers, and by the fact that in the reports on schools made to 
the Bishop of London by the ministers in 1724 there is nothing said 
concerning the matter.” 

If the parish clerk was not by virtue of his office a teacher in a 


20Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, VII, p. 157. 
"Hugh Jones, Present State of Virginia, 1724, p. 70. 
2Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, p. 338. 
%Maddox, The Free School Idea in Virginia, pp. 105-106. 
Perry, Historical Documents, 1, pp. 262-318. 


22 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


parish school, what was the relation, if any, between the functions of 
clerk and teacher? There is no direct evidence showing any custom- 
ary connection in Virginia, but the practice in that colony may be 
assumed to have been like that in North and South Carolina. Brick- 
ell, in his Natural History of North Carolina, written in 1737, states 
in reference to church practices in the colony that ‘‘They seldom have 
orthodox Clergymen,”’ but that ‘The want of these Protestant clergy, 
is generally supply’d by some School Masters’’ who serve as readers.” 
A similar custom was sometimes followed in South Carolina. In St. 
John’s Parish in that colony the settlers “had raised a Log-house 30 
feet by 20, for a place of worship, and allowed their Schoolmaster a 
small salary, to read for them, on Sundays, the Liturgy of the Church, 
anda Sermon.” In St. Mark’s Parish in South Carolina the parish- 
ioners ‘“‘used to meet on Sundays and have the Service of the Church 
read to them by a Layman. This duty generally devolved on the 
Schoolmaster of the place.’’” The fact seems to have been that 
schoolmasters were more or less often chosen to be readers because 
they had the necessary qualifications and because their work as 
reader did not interfere with their regular occupation. This state- 
ment no doubt applies as well to Virginia as to the Carolinas.?8 It is 
evident that the schools conducted by the clerks or readers were not 
parish affairs. It may be stated here that not only is there no evi- 
dence indicating that the clerks as parish servants taught school, but 
there is nothing in the sources to suggest that a parish ever employed 
a schoolmaster with the understanding that he was to devote his 
whole time to the instruction of parish children. That is, there were 
no schools the teachers of which were supplied by the parishes. 


PARISH MINISTERS AS TEACHERS 


In connection with the study of the parish clerks as teachers it is 
appropriate to give some consideration to the educational work of 
the ministers even though it is evident that what they did does not 


**Brickell, Natural History of North Carolina, p. 365. 

*6Dalcho, F., History of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 1820, p. 271. 

*7Dalcho, p. 324. 

*8T wo known cases of teachers in Virginia who were readers or parish clerks are 
those of Frederick Upp and William Cheeke. Upp in 1759 was ‘‘reader in the 
church on the Fork’’ in Augusta County. He agreed with some of the parish- 
ioners to keep school for six months at the rate of twelve shillings and a bushel of 
wheat for each child, but he was made a better offer by people in another parish 
and accepted it (Stanard, Colonial Virginia, p. 275). Samuel Cabell of Nelson 
County went to school ‘‘in 1769, to William Cheeke, the parish clerk’’ (Brown, 
The Cabells and Their Kin, p. 145). 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 23 


come within the scope of parish educational activity. The fact that 
ministers sometimes instructed boys in the better class families is 
brought out in various writings dealing with educational history in 
Virginia, the general view being that it was the common practice. 
W. G. McCabe in an essay on Virginia schools before the Revolution 
says that throughout 

the whole colonial period, such education as existed was almost entirely in the 
hands of parsons who on their glebes, or, if unmarried, at the houses of the great 
land owners, conducted what were known as ‘Parsons Schools.’29 

Bruce expresses the view that the majority of the persons keeping 
neighborhood schools ‘‘were, throughout the seventeenth century 
drawn from the circle of clergymen, who thus endeavored to increase 
their income.’’*° In speaking of the education of John Marshall, 
who was taught by a young Scotch deacon, Beveridge says that the 
parsons “always were teachers as well as preachers.’’*! 

The statements concerning the educational work of the ministers 
in Virginia are usually generalizations based on certain well-known 
cases of those who, toward the end of the colonial period, prepared 
for college boys who later became leading men, and the source of 
information most commonly used is Bishop Meade’s Old Churches 
and Families of Virginta.. The original sources are for the most part 
fragmentary in character and widely scattered, and in the absence of 
any official state or church records dealing with the subject main 
dependence has been placed in this study upon Bishop Meade’s work 
and the biographies of eminent Virginians. 

In the examination of writin’s which give information regarding 
the ministers’ activity as teachers, references have been found to 
sixteen different pastors who taught a school or tutored in the homes 
of the planters. These men may be taken up in order of the time of 
their service. 

The first’ minister who served as a teacher to whom reference 
has been found is Rev. James Wilson who was employed in 1658 by 
some of the inhabitants of Elizabeth River Parish to instruct their 
children.*? No details regarding his work appear. A letter written 
in 1722 tells of the employment of a young divine as tutor, probably 
in York County: 

We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood until now in five years. 
~ 29M cCabe, W. Gordon, Virginia Schools, p. 8. 

39Bruce, Institutional History, I, p. 332. 


31Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, Tovrea 
Bruce, Institutional History, I, p. 33. 


24 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


We have now a young minister living with us who was educated at Oxford, 
took orders and came over as assistant to Rev. Kemp at Glocester. That 
parish is too poor to keep both, and he teaches for his board. He teaches Sister 
Susie and me, and Madam Carter’s boy and two girls... .% 


Mrs. Elizabeth Churchill stated in her will, drawn up in 1716, 
that she desired that ‘“Mr. Bartholomew Yates undertake the instruc- 
tion of my son in his own house in Latin and Greek.’’** She provided 
that Mr. Yates was ‘‘to be given two of the best beeves and four of 
the best hogs, over and above what he shall demand for teaching and 
board.’”’ Mr. Yates was pastor in Christ Church Parish, Middlesex 
County, in 1724, and he probably was in 1716. 

“In 1740 Rev. James Marye opened a school in Fredericksburg 
to which in course of time went Washington, Madison, and Monroe.*® 
The Rev. Wm. Douglas in 1748 or 1749 ‘‘came over [from Scotland] 
as a teacher in the family. of Colonel Monroe, of Westmoreland, 
father of President Monroe who was one of the pupils, as was also 
Mr. Jefferson afterwards, in Goochland.’’* 

Rev. Archibald Campbell kept a school in Westmoreland County 
at the middle of the eighteenth century, and “‘it may also be true, as 
tradition further reports, that General Washington and Thomas 
Marshall, father of the Chief-Justice, and perhaps Colonel Monroe 
and Mr. Madison, all of whom were born in this region, may at one 
time have been scholars of Mr. Campbell.’”®” When John Marshall 
was a boy the minister in Leeds Parish, James Thompson, lived in 
the Marshall home for a year and taught the older children. ‘‘During 
his trial year the young Scotch deacon returned Thomas Marshall’s 
hospitality by giving the elder children such instruction as occasion 
offered....’’38 James Madison received his early training in the 
school of Rev. Donald Robertson, a pastor in King and Queen County: 


His novitiate was passed at a school of much reputation in the County of 
King and Queen, conducted by an erudite Scotchman of the name of Donald 
Robertson. In this school he was instructed mainly in the Greek, Latin, French, 
and Spanish languages. ... After leaving the school of Mr. Robertson, young 
Madison prosecuted his studies at home, under the tuition of the Rev. Thomas 
Martin, the established minister of the parish, who lived, at the time, in the 
family at Montpelier.*9 


Pryor, Mrs. Roger A., The Mother of Washington and Her Times, p. 29. 
34Stanard, Colonial Virginia, p. 276. 

33Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 458. 

38Tbid., p. 458. 

‘81Ibid., II, p. 158. 

38Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, I, p. 52. 

39Rives, Life of Madison, p. 10 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 25 


As will be shown later, the minister of Elizabeth River Parish in 
Norfolk County in 1762, Alexander Rhonnald, had been previously 
master of a charity school in a neighboring county. The school was 
very probably the Eaton School, an endowed institution which will 
be considered in the following chapter. 

Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who is perhaps the best known of the 
Virginia colonial schoolmasters, conducted a boarding school first in 
Hanover Parish and then in St. Mary’s Parish from 1762 until 1774. 
He says in a letter to Washington, who placed his step-son in the 
school, 


I had now also increased my number of boys to nearly thirty, most of them the 
sons of the first condition in the colony. They all boarded with me, and I wholly 
superintended them myself, without any usher, for two years. 


Nicholas Cabell attended the, 


classical school of Rev. James Maury of Albemarle, of the Parson’s Cause fame 
from May, 1767, to May 1769, in which year Mr. Maury died. Thomas Jefferson 
Bishop Madison, John Taylor or Carolina, Dabney Carr, the elder, and numerous 
other distinguished men were educated by Mr. Maury.*! 


“ 


Another dominie noted for his inspiring use of the rod, was the Rev. John 
Cameron, D.D., a graduate of King’s College; Aberdeen, who came over to 
Virginia from Scotland in 1770, and long taught a select classical school in Lunen- 
burg County, where he was also minister of the parish.” 


In 1771 a young minister who was seeking appointment to a parish 
advertised in the Williamsburg Gazette that he intended to teach 
school as well as serve as pastor, and he probably carried out his 
intention. i 


To the Publick:—A clergyman of the Church of England, a sober young man, 
with a good character, would serve as a minister to a Church in any of his Majesty’s 
Plantations, upon Trial, on reasonable terms. He proposes to teach Ladies and 
Gentlemen the French, Latin, Greek, and English Languages, Book-keeping by 
double entry, Algebra, Geometry, surveying, Mechanicks, Fortification, Gunnery, 
Navigation, and the use of the Globes and Maps, after a natural, easy, and con- 
cise method, without Burthen to the Memory. For particulars, Letters directed 
(postpaid), to the Reverend W. S., to the care of the Reverend Thomas Smith, 
Rector of Cople Parish in Westmoreland, Potowmack, Virginia, will have proper 
answers as soon as possible.* 


The diary of Col. William Cabell contains the following entry for 
November 7, 1775: 


10D etters from Jonathan Boucher to George Washington, p. 5. 
4iBrown, Alexander, The Cabells and Their Kin, p. 145. 
“McCabe, W. G., Virginia Schools, pp. 11-12. 

8William and Mary College Quarterly, VII, p. 178. 


26 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


The Rev. Robert Buchan began his school at my house, and all my children 
are put under his tuition.” 

Bishop Meade quotes a statement that the Rev. James Maury 
Fontaine kept a school when he was minister in Ware Parish.*® 

The above completes the list of ministers who taught school of 
whose work record has been found. Doubtless there were others and 
we are justified in concluding that the practice was fairly common. 
There are various facts, however, the consideration of which shows 
that the custom was not universal. Bishop Meade had a compre- 
hensive acquaintance with the possible sources of information con- 
cerning the colonial ministers’ work, and he undoubtedly would have 
found others among them who taught if in fact the larger share of 
them followed the practice. The clergy in Virginia petitioned Gov- 
ernor Andros in 1695 for anincrease in their salaries, and the petition 
was sent on to the Burgesses, who refused to comply with the request 
because they thought the salaries then paid were sufficient, consider- 
ing the fact that the ministers also received certain perquisites. The 
ministers’ reply contained the following statement: 

As to our considerable Perquisites, wee beg leave to inform your Excell’y 
that wee have noe Perquisites but for marriages and a few funeral Sermons, 
and that by a computation wee have made of the Perquisites of the generality 
of our Parishes, wee find that they do not amount communibus Annis to above 
five pounds per annum.‘* 

If it had been the regular custom at the time for the ministers 
to teach school, there probably would have been some reference to 
this work as a source of income. Neither Robert Beverley nor Hugh 
Jones in their accounts of conditions in the colony at the beginning 
of the eighteenth century make reference to the work of ministers 
as teachers, although they give particular attention to education. 
In 1724 the Bishop of London sent to the ministers in Virginia a set 
of questions inquiring about conditions and practices in the parishes, 
to which twenty-nine replied.” In response to the question con- 
cerning education no one made reference to his teaching school al- 
though private schools are mentioned. It is likely that, as the above 
statements concerning individual pastors suggest, it was more com- 
mon toward the end of the colonial period for the ministers to act 
as teachers or tutors than it had been previously. The general 


“Brown, The Cabells and Thetr Kin, p. 191. 

. Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 328. 
46Anderson, J. S. M., History of the Colonial Church, I, p. 603. 
“Perry, Historical Collections, I, pp. 262-318. 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 27 


advance of culture and the growth in importance of William and 
Mary College were factors creating a demand for the Latin instruc- 
tion which the ministers could give. 


PAYMENT BY THE PARISH FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF POOR CHILDREN 


Although it seems to have been a fairly common custom in England 
to make expenditures out of parish funds for the education of poor 
children in private schools, the parishes in Virginia did not adopt the 
practice. An examination of practically all of the extant vestry 
books shows only five cases. ‘The minutes of the meeting of the Pets- 
worth Parish vestry in October, 1713, contain the following entry: 

Dr. to Ezekiell Smith for keeping and schooling Jane Halloway — 800 

to Wm. Anderson for keeping and schooling Mary Launlings—500.‘8 

The figures given indicate the number of pounds of tobacco paid. 
In 1744 the vestry of Fredericksville Parish in Louisa County paid 
Richard Farmer eight pounds and ten shillings for providing for the 
support of a girl until she should become eighteen years of age and 
for giving her ‘“‘two years schooling to learn it to read.”’ The Albe- 
marle Parish vestry in 1748 ‘Ordered that the Church Wardens do 
pay out of the Fines in Their Hands for one Year’s Schooling of a 
child of a certain Frances Copeland, a Woman under Low Circum- 
stances.’’*° In 1771 the vestry of Wicomico Parish paid for the in- 
struction of a poor child.*° 

The small number of cases where expenditure was made for the 
education of poor children makes it impossible to attach any positive 
significance to the action taken except that it shows that the vestries 
thought they possessed the right, possibly because of English custom, 
to make outlay for the education of individual children. If it had 
seemed desirable to the local. governments, a general practice of 
educating poor childern in private schools at parish expense could 
have developed. 


PARISH PROVISION OF SCHOOL BUILDING 


It was not the custom for the parishes of colonial Virginia to 
provide schoolhouses for the free use of masters to induce them to 
conduct schools. The only case found is mentioned in the record 
of Linhaven Parish in Princess Anne County. In the minutes of the 


48MS. copy of Petsworth vestry book, p. &6. 
49Albemarle Parish MS. vestry book, April 12, 1748. 
50Wicomico Parish vestry book, p. 57. 


28 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


vestry meeting in this parish held March 2, 1736 the following entry 
appears: 


On the motion of Col. Anthony Walke that the old Church woo’d be a con- 
venient place to make a public school off for instructing children to learning, 
that liberty might be given for ye applying it to that purpose, ye vestry taking the 
said proposall also being of the opinion that after it is made commodious ‘twould 
be an encouragement to induce a master constantly toattend thereon; Do there- 
fore unanimously Resolve that ye said Church be, and it is hereby given for the 
use aforesaid, and to and for no other use or purpose whatsoever.*! 


The vestry of Elizabeth River Parish in Norfolk County allowed 
Mr. James Pasteur to take the bricks and timber of the old church 
to build a house, presumably a schoolhouse, on the ‘“‘school land.’’™ 
The land had probably been given to the parish for school purposes. 

It is clear that with negligible exceptions the parishes in colonial 
Virginia did not aid in the education of their children by establishing 
schools, by paying for instruction in private schools, or by furnishing 
community school buildings. We shall next consider the endowed 
type of parish school the operation of which did not require public 
expenditure.* 


SIMS. Vestry Minutes of Linhaven Parish, March 2, 1736. A similar case ex- 
cept that the court took the action is found in the records of Essex County: 

At a Court held for Essex Co. Feb. 10, 1704. On the motion of Capt. Robert 
Coleman, It is considered by the Court that the Old Prison standing at Hobses 
Hole Tappahannock be appropriated to the use of a Schoole house, and to no 
other use whatsoever. (Essex County, Order Book, 1703-08, p. 147). 

At a Court held for Essex August 1705. The Petition of Richard Cooke 
Keeper of the School at Hobbs Hole to have liberty to live in the sd School house 
is Referd to the consideration of the next Court. (William and Mary College 
Quarterly, Ser. 2, I, p. 142, contributed by Clayton Torrence). 

2Vleade, Old Churches, I, 276. 

The following note concerning educational provisions among the German 
and French settlers in Virginia may be added here. 

In the German settlement at Germanna, in Orange County, a school was 
established shortly after 1739 of which the pastor was the regular teacher. The 
Germans here were allowed to have their own religious parish organization sepa- 
rate from the official parish. The facts concerning the school are given by 
Schuricht, in his German Element in Virginia, page 75: 

In 1739 Rev. Stoever travelled to Germany in order to raise money for building 
a church, a parsonage with schoolrooms, and to establish a library. The in- 
struction in school afterwards was given by the venerable parson himself and it 
comprised religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

In Rockingham County in 1769 a parish school was established by the Germans 
worshipping at the Peaked Mountain Church, but the minister here was apparent- 
ly not the teacher. The arrangement under which the school was operated 
as indicated in the following statement is of interest. 

“Agreement between the Reformed and Lutheran Congregations Worshipping 
in the Peaked Mountain Church; Rockingham County, Virginia, 

October 31, 1769 

We have established it as a union church, in the use of which the Lutherans and 
their descendants as well as the Reformed and their descendants, shall have equal 
share. But since it is necessary to keep in repair the church and the schoolhouse 


Three Types of Parish Educational Activity 20 


and support the minister and schoolmaster, therefore, we have drawn up this 
writing that each member sign his name to the same and thereby certify that 
he will support the minister and schoolmaster and help to keep in repair the 
church and schoolhouse as far as lies in his ability. Should, however, one or 
another withdraw himself from such Christian work (which we would not suppose 
a Christian would do), we have unitedly concluded that such a one shall not be 
looked upon as a member of our congregation.” 

Asa penalty for failure to help in support of the church and school it was agreed 
that those who should withdraw themselves from the work should pay for a 
baptism two shillings, six pence, and for communion or confirmation five shillings 
(Wayland, A History of Rockingham County, Virginia, p. 61). 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century French Huguenots made a settle- 
ment in King William Parish on the south side of the James River in what was 
then Henrico County. The parish government was in their hands and the record 
was kept in French until 1750. The activity of the parish government as shown in 
the vestry record was essentially like that in other parishes, except that there is no 
indication that the vestry and wardens bound out children as apprentices. 
What they did with reference to schools has not been determined. The only 
allusion to schools in King William Parish which has been found in the course of 
this study is that made by Bishop Meade. He says, 

“Even the little establishment of Huguenots at Manakintown, whose compact 
settlement so favoured education, and whose parentage made its members to 
desire it, was so destitute, that about this time (1724) one of their leading men, a 
Mr. Sallie, on hearing that the King was about to establish a colony in Ireland for 
the Huguenots, addressed him a letter begging permission to be united to it, 
saying that there was no school among them where their children could be edu- 
cated’’ (Meade, Old Churches, I, p. 190). 


CHAPTER IIT 
ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS 


ENGLISH PRECEDENTS 


In the reign of Elizabetha number of free elementary schools were 
established in England by gifts similar to those upon which the 
grammar schools were founded, and in the seventeenth century en- 
dowed schools of this type became common.! Between 1660 and 1730 
no less than 905 non-classical endowed schools were set up. Some 
and probably many of these institutions were parish schools, that 
is, the founders either gave them directly to the parishes or pro- 
vided that the wardens or vestry should administer them for the 
good of parish children. For instance, in St. Olave’s Parish in 
Southwark in 1561 the church wardens were ordered to receive 
moneys from the executors of an estate to set up a free school and 
choose a schoolmaster to teach children to write, read, and cast 
accounts.’ 

Whatever is the general explanation of the great interest in the 
education of the poor which was shown in England by the many 
gifts for the founding of schools, no doubt in the colonies the same 
interest was felt; and where there was no development of common 
public schools or of church schools which provided for the poor we 
should expect to find that benevolent men followed the English 
custom and established free schools by endowment. It is well known 
that in fact there were in colonial Virginia, as in the other southern 
colonies, a number of such institutions and that some were in con- 
trol of the parishes. It is the purpose in the present chapter to 
determine the number, character, and service of the endowed parish 
schools in Virginia, and as far as may be to ascertain what share they 
constituted of all the endowed schools in the colony. 


1 De Montmorency, State Interference in English Education, pp. 189-90; state- 
ment based on the Digest of Schools and Charities for Education reported to 
Parliament in 1842. 

Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 150. 


30 


Endowed Parish Schools ae 


ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS IN) VIRGINIA 


The official records from which information concerning the en- 
dowed parish schools of colonial Virginia may be gained are the 
minutes of the vestry meetings, the county court records, the Acts 
of the Assembly, and the reports on educational conditions in 1724 
which were made to the Bishop of London whose diocese embraced 
the colonies. The number of extant vestry books, the period they 
cover, and the character of their contents have been indicated. In 
the colonial statutes are found several Acts of incorporation which 
give the essential provisions in the wills of the founders of certain 
schools and show something of the operation of the institutions. 
The court records of wills and orders give evidence regarding bequests 
and the management of schools. With small exception the volumi- 
nous court records have not been printed, and only those in print and 
the published extracts dealing with schools have been used in the 
course of the present study. The reports of 1724, although brief, are 
the best contemporary source of information concerning schools asa 
whole in the colony at any one time, and in a number of instances 
they help in interpreting data relating to those established in the 
years before the survey was made. They also furnish a means of 
checking up on material found in other sources. The contemporary 
writings of an unofficial type which refer to endowed schools in the 
colony are few and they add but little to the facts supplied by the 
public records. Because of the bearing of the facts in the reports of 
1724 on the period preceding that year rather than on that which 
follows, consideration will first be given to the schools founded in 
the earlier period. 


ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED BEFORE 1724 


The question asked of the parish ministers in Virginia by the 


Bishop of London was, 
Have you in your Parish any Public School for the instruction of youth? 
If you have, is it endowed? and who is the Master? 


3Perry, W.S., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, 
I, p. 261. Theinquiry of the Bishop embraced questions concerning religious and 
social conditions in the colony, so that for each of the 29 parishes from which 
replies were received there is a fairly good description of the situation. The same 
survey was made in Maryland and Connecticut. The parishes in Virginia which 
were reported upon were the following: Westminster (location undetermined), 
St. Paul’s in Hanover County, James City in James City County, Bristol in 
Prince George, St. Peter’s in New Kent, Westover in Charles City, Hungars in 
Northampton, Newport in Isle of Wight, Stratton Major in King and Queen, 
Wilmington (location undetermined), Blissland in New Kent, York Hampton in 


32 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 


A typical reply) from a parish where there was no public school 
is the following from St, Peter’s Parish in New Kent County: 

We have no Public Schools but some private, wherein children are taught to 
read, write; etc.4 

The Bishop’s inquiry does not indicate what he meant by ‘“‘public 
school,’ but it is evident that the ministers understood the term to 
signify simply a school which was not operated privately for gain, 
and in effect this meant a school open without charge to at least some 
of the children of the community in which it was located, with support 
coming from endowment, occasional gifts, or taxation.’ That is, 
the term was an inclusive one under which the ministers might list 
any kind of free school; in fact, however, all the public schools re- 
ported in 1724 were endowed. In taking up the endowed parish 
schools we may consider separately each parish in which one was 
reported. 


Elizabeth City Parish in Elizabeth City County 


The minister of Elizabeth City Parish reported in 1724 that in 
his parish, 

There are two schools endowed, though very meanly, whereof John Mason 
and Abram Paris are teachers. There is also a very good private school where, 
besides reading, arithmetic and writing, Latin and Greek are very well taught, 
whereof William Fyfe, a man of good life and conversation is master.® 

The endowed schools referred to were two which had been founded 
in the seventeenth century upon the bequests of Benjamin Syms and 
Thomas Eaton. The earliest reference to the Syms School, which 


York, Christ Church in Lancaster, South Farnham in Essex, Petsworth in Glou- 
cester, Lawn’s Creek in Surry, Washington in Westmoreland, Elizabeth City in 
Elizabeth City, Upper Parish in Isle of Wight, Christ Church in Middlesex, 
Bruton in James City, Accomako in Accomac, St. Stephen’s in King and Queen, 
Henrico in Henrico, Southwark in Surry, Abingdon in Gloucester, St. Mary’s 
in Essex, Overwharton in Stafford, St. Anne’s in Essex. 

4Tbid., p. 269. 

‘While it is clear that the ministers in 1724 all agreed in their understanding of 
‘‘public school’ as meaning a free school, the term was sometimes used in the 
later colonial period, at least, in application to a purely private institution oper- 
ated for profit and public only in the sense that public patronage was desired. 
An illustration of this use is found in the following advertisement appearing in the 
Williamsburg Gazette in 1771: 

‘“‘John Bruce, M. A., has opened a Publick School over against the Church, at the 
head of Cumberland Street, Norfolk, and proposes to teach the Greek, Latin, and 
English Languages, Navigation, Bookkeeping, Arithmetick, Mathematicks; 
where those who choose to favor him with the Instruction of their Children, may 
depend on all due attention being paid their education.’’ (Quoted in William and 
Mary College Quarterly, VII, p. 178). 

SPerry, W. S., Historical Collections, I, p. 294. 


ay 


Endowed Parish Schools 33 


was established first, is in an Act of 1642-437 confirming the donor’s 
will which was drawn up in 1634-35.8 Syms provided that two hun- 
dred acres of land in the county and parish of Elizabeth City which 
he owned, together with the milk and increase of eight milch cows, 
should be given, 

for the maintenance of a learned, honest man, to keep upon the said ground a free 


school for the education and instruction of the children of the adjoining parishes 
of Elizabeth City and Kiquotan. 


The will further declared it to be the desire of Syms, 


that the justices of the peace of the said county of Elizabeth City, with the 
minister and churchwardens of the said parish of Elizabeth City, should see his 
will justly and truly performed, and further declared his will to be, that when 
there should be a sufficient increase of the said cattle, part of them should be sold, 
and the money raised by such sale, laid out in building a schoolhouse, and that the 
residue of the said increase, after the schoolmaster should have a sufficient stock, 
should be applied towards repairing the said house, and maintaining poor children, 
or decayed or maimed persons.? 


It appears from the fact that the will was confirmed in 1642-43 
that Syms had died shortly before, so that the date of his bequest 
may be set as early as 1641.1° The sanctioning of the will in 1642-43 
made the property available at that time, and probably the school 
was put in operation shortly thereafter. It was certainly running 
before 1647, for the author of A Perfect Description of Virginia, 
which was written in that year, said in reference to it, 

I may not forget to tell you we have a Free-School, with two hundred Acres of 
Land, a fine house upon it, forty milch Kine, and other accommodations to it: 
the Benefactor deserves perpetual memory: His name Mr. Benjamin Symes, 
worthy to be Chronicled, other petty schools also we have." 

The school is again referred to in a court record of 1693 which shows 
that it was then in operation, as presumably it had been in the preced- 
ing years, and that the schoolhouse was kept up. It was ordered that, 

Robert Crook Schoolmaster of Symmes School be allowed and paid for his 
charges in repairing ye school House two old cows in lieu thereof.” 


THening, I, p. 2652. 
8The will is apparently not in existence, but its date and terms are given in an 
Act incorporating its trustees passed in 1753 (Hening, VI, p. 389). 
*Hening, VI, p. 389 
— 10Syms was apparently the first man to provide in his will for the endowment 
of an American school, but the bequest made upon his death was antedated by 
that of John Harvard by three years. 


—UA Perfect Description of Virginia, Force Historical Tracts, II, p. #6.!5 


2Quoted by Lyon G. Tyler in William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 74. 
The court records of Elizabeth City County for the years previous to 1689 are not 
in existence. While in the early years of the existence of the Syms School there 
was a schoolhouse separate from the dwelling, it seems that at the middle of the 


34 Parish Education,in Colonial Virginia 


The court record shows that in 1699 Crook resigned and that a 
new master was ‘appointed. The\next reference to the Syms School 
which has been found appears in an advertisement in the Williams- 
burg Gazette of March 12, 1752: 

Notice is hereby given, that Symmes’ Free School, in Elizabeth City County, 
will be vacant on the 25th of March, a tutor of a good character, and properly 


qualified may meet with good encouragement by applying to the Trustees of the 
Said School. 


N.B. The Land Rent of the said School is 31£ per Ann., besides Perquisites.¥ 

At this time, and possibly long before, it was the custom to rent 
the Syms farm, reserving only the plot on which was located the 
master’s dwelling in which the school was kept. When the farm 
was leased in 1760 ‘‘one acre at the southwest corner’ with buildings 
was reserved, and apparently this was the location of the school. 


In 1753 the trustees of the school were incorporated by the As- 
sembly with the intention, indicated in the act of incorporation, of 
enabling the justices of the peace of the county of Elizabeth City, and the minister 
and churchwardens of the parish of Elizabeth City, in that county, to take and 
hold certain lands devised by the will of Benjamin Sym, for a free school, and 
other charitable uses. 

After giving the terms of Syms’ will the Act goes on to state that 
“the charitable intentions of the said Benjamin Sym, the donor, 
hath not been effectually fulfilled,” and that it was the desire of the 
Assembly to incorporate the trustees ‘‘to the end that the said 
charity may be more beneficial for the future.’’ In just what way 
Syms’ intentions had not been carried out is not stated, but the Act 
implies that lessees were in arrears of rents, that damages had been 
“sustained by occasion of not repairing the houses’’ on the land, 
_ and that the master of the school may have assumed a vested right 


eighteenth century at least the school was kept in the master’s dwelling. Section IV 
of an Act of 1753, incorporating the trustees, provides that they should use the rents 
in part for the purpose of “‘erecting and keeping in repair a sufficient school- 
house for his [the master’s] dwelling.’’ (Hening, VI, pp. 389-92). 

3A bound volume containing the issues of the Williamsburg Gazette for 1752 is 
in the New York Public Library. The perquisites referred to in the advertise- 
ment, as suggested in a rental contract made in 1760, consisted in the use of four 
cows and the combined school building and dwelling. The use and increase of the 
cattle belonging to the school were given with the land, the schoolmaster after 
1760 having the use of four cows which were pastured for him. In 1760 the school 
herd Vin of ‘eleven head of black cattle’? (The Syms-Eaton Free School, 
p. 14). 

MRrom an indenture appearing in Elizabeth City County records, quoted in 
The Syms-Eaton Free School, pp. 13-15. 

lbHening, VI, 390. 


Endowed Parish Schools 35 


in his position without control by the trustees. The Act allowed the 
trustees, 

to nominate and appoint when, and often as they shall think good, such persons 
as they shall approve of, to be master of the said free school. . . .And the said 
trustees and the Governors, and their successors for the time being, shall and may 
have full power and authority to visit the said free school, and to order, reform, 
and redress all disorder and abuses in and touching the government and dis- 
posing of the same, and to remove the said master, as to them, or the greater part 
of them, shal] seem just, fit, and convenient. 

It seems probable that the trustees in the preceding period of the 
school’s history had exercised little oversight, so that a precedent 
had grown up which made it necessary for those in charge of the 
school in 1753 to ask for legislative action in order that they might 
regain control. The inaction of the trustees is indicated by the lack 
of records showing regulation from 1699 to 1752. While the title 
of the Act of incorporation suggests that the chief end sought by 
incorporation was the delegation of the right to control the school 
lands, the fact that the rental in 1760,!° seven years after the in- 
corporation, was the same as in 1752, as shown by the advertisement 
quoted above, indicates that the main purpose was to allow the 
trustees to regain control of the management of the school and per- 
haps to make clear their responsibility in the matter. In any case 
it is evident that for a considerable period the school was not care- 
fully managed. 

After 1753 there is no reference to the Syms School in the sources 
examined except in the lease of 1760 referred to, but there is no 
reason for thinking that it was not in continuous operation during 
the remainder of the colonial period. Considering the long period 
during which the school was in existence, the data giving information 
concerning it are relatively few, and we can tell little directly from 
the records with regard to its real character. It is evident, however, 
that it was a free endowed school controlled by a board of trustees 
composed of county and parish officials, the participation of parish 
officers making it appropriate to consider it as one among a number of 
institutions of a similar general type which were purely parish 
affairs. 

Besides the Syms School there was in Elizabeth City Parish in 
1724 another endowed institution known as the Eaton Free School, 
which was founded on the bequest of Thomas Eaton in compliance 


16Rental indenture, county clerk’s office, quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, 
pp. 13-14. 


36 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


with his will drawn up in 1659. This was one of the two endowed 
schools to which the minister of the parish referred. The character 
of Eaton’s gift and his intention with reference to its use are shown 
in the following extract from the will. 

I have for the maintenance of an able Schoolmaster to educate and teach the 
children borne within the said county of Elizabeth City. ... 

Given, granted, assigned, set over and confirmed and doo by these presents 
give, grant, assign, set over and confirm after the time of my decease for the use 
aforesaid, Five hundred acres of land, whereon the said Free School shall be 
kept, . .. Two negroes... Twelve Cows and two Bulls, Twenty hogs, [here is 
given a list of household utensils as a part of the grant] to have and to hould the 
said land with all other the premises before mentioned for the use afores’d, with 
all ye male increase thereof, for ye maintenance of the said schoolmaster such one 
as by the Commissioners, Mynister & churchwardens whom I doo nominate 
and appoint as trustees in trust for the ordering and settling thereof from time to 
time shall be thought fit, and I, the said Thomas Eaton do further order and 
appoint that no free education bee allowed but to such children as shall be borne 
within the said county.!’ 

The Eaton School was in all likelihood opened shortly subsequent 
to the donor’s death, which probably occurred not long after 1659. 
It was certainly in operation some time before 1692, for in that year 
the court record shows that the trustees required that a man who had 
served as master previous to that time should provide food and 
clothing for an old slave given in the bequest whom he had neglected 
to care for properly: 

Whereas Mr. Ebenezer Taylor, late schoolmaster of Eaton’s free-school, his 
time being expired & having had ye Benefitt and p’quisetts thereof, It is thought 
reasonable yt a negroe woman belonging to ye sd schoole should be cloathed at 
ye charges of ye sd schoolemaster. .. .18 

There are brief references to the Eaton School in the court records 
for 1693 and 1695. The record for 1697, showing the appointment 
of a teacher, indicates that instruction was given at that time in 
“oramer learninge’”’ as well as in English: 

Mr. George Eland with consent of this court is elected Schoolmaster of Eaton’s 
free school & he is to continue in place as he shall be approved of from year to 
year Teaching all such children in English and gramer learninge as shall be sent 
to him yt are belonging to this county, and he is to have all such p’quisettes and 
p’fitts as is belonging to ye s’d schoole.!® 

In 1699 part of the Eaton farm was rented for a period of twenty- 
one years, the lessee agreeing to pay two hundred pounds of tobacco 


William and Mary College Quarierly, XI, pp. 19-20. 

Tbid., p. 74. The earliest record book of Elizabeth City County begins with 
the year 1689. 

19Tbtd., p. 74. 


Endowed Parish Schools 37 


per year, plant one hundred apple trees, and build, apparently for 
the master, ‘‘one substantial thirty-foot dwelling house.’’° The land 
had been leased some time previous to 1699 which makes it appear that 
from an early date it was the custom to rent the farm, the master 
receiving the income and the use of the dwelling and schoolhouse. 

The record for 1720 contains the following statement showing 
that the Elizabeth City Parish vestry had taken a part in controlling 
the school property even though according to the terms of the will 
it had no right in the matter: 

Upon compl’t made by Henry Irvin gent ag’t Jno Curle about Eaton’s free 
schoole land of waste being made of the timbers, it is ordered that the Clk, bring 
s’d Eaton’s will and Deed to next court concerning the premises and a copy of the 
vestry ord’r whereby Curle hath the land granted to him.”! 

In 1725 the school land was rented with the understanding that 
in return for the use of the property the lessee should provide a 
schoolmaster, thus relieving the trustees of their responsibility: 

Upon the motion of William Tucker setting forth that he is willing to take the 
school Jand and provide a schoolmaster, it is ordered that the said Tucker have 
possession of the said land with this proviso and condition, that he constantly 
keep and provide a schoolmaster to teach children in said land.” 

The extracts from the records of 1720 and 1725 given above sug- 
gest that the trustees were not exercising proper care in managing 
the school and its property. As a means of eliminating any doubt 
about their power and obligation the Assembly in 1730 passed an 
Act allowing them “‘to take and hold certain lands given by Thomas 
Eaton to charitable uses and to lett leases thereof.’’?% 

Notwithstanding the passage of the Act of 1730 the management 
of the Eaton property did not improve, as is shown in an Act of 
incorporation enacted in 1759 entitled ‘‘An Act for the better regulat- 
ing Eaton’s Charity School.’’*4 In the Act it is stated or directly 
implied that part of the lands had not been profitable “‘the trustees 
having neglected to let the same,” that ‘“‘some of the leases were 
either lost or in the custody of the tenants who would not produce 
them,’ that waste had been committed on the lands without the 
recovery of damages, and that there had been breach of contract by 
the lessees in not building and planting on the farm according to the 


20Court record, June 19, 1699. Quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, p. 11. 
1William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 74. 

Court record, Nov. 17, 1725. Quoted in The Syms-Eaton Free School, p. 11. 
*Hening, VII, pp. 317-18. 

*Hening, VII, pp. 317-19. 


38 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 


terms of the leases. A partial explanation of the inaction of the 
trustees, according to a statement in the Act, lay in the fact that 
they doubted their authority, although this could not explain neg- 
ligence in renting the land or loss of the leases, and in view of the 
provisions of the Eaton will and the Act of 1730 it does not seem that 
it could have been the real reason for failure to act in the cases of the 
other matters mentioned. The real explanation for the facts in- 
dicated seems to have been quite clearly that the trustees for a long 
period neglected their trust so that abuses grew up. If in fact the 
trustees had looked upon their lack of power as the reason for inaction 
they could have asked for and secured their incorporation long before 
1759. 

The Eaton School trustees not only were negligent in the manage- 
ment of the school land, but, as is shown in the following excerpt from 
the Act of incorporation, they were careless in at least one important 
particular in carrying out their duty in the management of the school. 

And whereas the said foundation hath been abused, by admitting a great 
number of children into the said school, whose parents are well able to pay for 
their education: For remedy whereof, Be it, enacted by the authority aforesaid, 
That no person shall enjoy the benefit of the said charity-school without the con- 
sent of the master, for the time being except such poor children as the said trustees 


and governors and their successors, or the greater part of them, shall from time 
to time declare to be the proper objects of the pious founder’s charity. 


The above paragraph suggests that the trustees had allowed the 
children of the well-to-do to attend the school and that they had 
either excluded the poor for whom it was founded or had allowed a 
custom to grow up which kept them out. There is evidence in the 
following quotation from a letter written in 1762 by the pastor of 
Elizabeth River Parish in Norfolk County pointing to the conclusion 
that the trustees were directly responsible for the abuse. 

I had a charity school in a neighboring county where the Gentlemen’s children 
were many years educated, and the objects of charity disdained, till I was obliged 
to leave the school, and lodge a Complaint in the Assembly, which has pre- 
vented the Grandees to reign longer, but from that time, they use me with the 
most invidious Terms of Ill nature for my pains.*6 

While the extract from the letter does not absolutely establish 
the fact that the minister who wrote it was referring to the Eaton 
School, a comparison between it and the paragraph from the Act 
quoted above makes it seem fairly certain that such was the case. 

*Hening, VII, p. 320. 


**Letter of Alexander Rhonnald to Rev. Dr. John Waring, Sept. 27, 1762; 
Bray MS., Box II, Minute Book B, p. 189. Found by W. W. Kemp. 


Endowed Parish Schools 39 


The county in which the Eaton School was located was “‘a neighboring 
county,’’ and there is no reference in the statutes to a legislative 
attempt to correct an abuse of the kind indicated except in the case 
of the Eaton School. Evidently when the minister who wrote the 
letter was master of the school he had endeavored without success to 
get the trustees to admit the poor so that he had to appeal to the 
Assembly. The Act no doubt restored the school to its original 
purpose, although it apparently allowed the master to take in some of 
the better class in cases where they obtained his consent. 

There seems to be no further reference to the Eaton School or 
the official records until after the end of the colonial period except in 
an entry in the Elizabeth City Parish vestry book of 1772 showing 
parish indebtedness in an amount the record of which is obliterated 
“To the Trustees of Eaton’s Free School for 3 years rent of 10 acres 
Land for the use of the Poor House.’’?? 

The extracts from the records which have been given show that 
the Eaton School was a parish-county institution similar to the one 
founded by Syms. The county record in which the action of the 
Trustees was entered gives no indication that the Elizabeth City 
Parish minister and church wardens had a part in managing the school 
but there is no doubt that they acted with the justices in accordance 
with the terms of the will. In fact it seems that upon one occasion 
at least the vestry exercised some control, for the record of 1720 
indicates that they had orderd the renting of part of the school 
land. It isclear that throughout its more than a century of existence 
the Eaton School had an income from its original endowment sufficient 
to provide a master. The exact amount received at any time is 
nowhere stated, but the fact that a man who leased the farm in 1725 
was required only to supply a master as payment and that the Syms 
School trustees were able to get a master for thirty pounds a year 
suggests that the income was approximately the same as in the case 
of the Syms School. 


Abingdon and Ware Parishes tn Gloucester County 


The answer made by the minister of Abingdon Parish to the 
ynquiry of the Bishop of London concerning schools in his parish in 
1724 was as follows: 
A free School endowed with 500 acres of good land, 3 slaves, cattle & household 
goods. The Master is George Ransom a native of Virginia.*§ 


*7Elizabeth City Parish vestry book, p. 139. 
*8Perry, Historical Collections, I, p. 309. 


40 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


The school referred to was undoubtedly one provided for in the 
will of Henry Peasley which was drawn up in 1675. The will is not 
in existence but a summary of it appears in an Act of 1756 incorporat- 
ing the trustees. The Act?’ stated that in 1675 Peasley devised, 


a tract or parcel of land, containing six hundred acres, or thereabouts, lying in and 
being in the Parish of Abingdon, . . . together with ten cows and one breeding 
mare, for the maintenance of a free school forever, to be kept with a school- 
master for the education of children of the Parishes of Abingdon and Ware, 
forever. 

The occasion for action by the Assembly in 1756 is shown in the 
second and third paragraphs of the Act: 


And whereas several slaves have been by different persons, since the above 
devise, given for the same purposes, but, by reason of the inconvenient situation 
of the said land, few children frequent the free school kept there, so that the 
charitable intention of the said Henry Peasley, and the other donors, is of little 
benefit to the said two parishes. 

And whereas it is represented to this present General Assembly, by the 
ministers, church wardens, and vestrymen of the said two parishes of Abingdon 
and Ware, that if proper persons were impowered to lease out the said land and 
slaves, the annual rents thereof would be sufficient to support and maintain a free 
school in each of the said parishes for the education of the children residing 
there. ... 


The Act then goes on to provide for the incorporation of the 
officers mentioned and to require them “‘to erect and found a free 
school in some convenient part of each of the said parishes of Abing- 
don and Ware.” The arrangement was clearly in harmony with 
the intention of Peasley. 

The above quotations show that up to 1756 the Peasley School 
was in Abingdon Parish, and the presumption is that it belonged to 
the two parishes mentioned in the Act and was controlled by their 
officers. The date of the will suggests that the school was in opera- 
tion some time before the end of the seventeenth century, but the 
loss of the vestry records of the parishes concerned and the lack of 
other data except those contained in the Act of 1756 and the minister’s 
report make it impossible to determine much about it. The clause 
“if proper persons were impowered to lease out the said land and 
slaves,’”’ suggests that up to 1756 the trustees had acted on the assump- 
tion that they did not have the power to lease the property and that 
probably the master of the school had had its use as his compensation. 
It is difficult to understand why the action taken in 1756 was not 
taken long before that date, for no doubt the location of the Peasley 


2*9Hening, VII, pp. 41-438. 


Endowed Parish Schools AI 


School had been unfavorable from the first. Whether the two 
parish schools were established in accordance with the direction of 
the Assembly cannot be determined with certainty, but it is unlikely 
that the officers of the two parishes would have requested power 
to make the arrangement if they had not desired and intended to 
use the permission given. It is reasonably certain that the school 
was in continuous operation from the latter part of the seventeenth 
century until 1756, and we may assume that after that year there 
was a school supported mainly from the income of the Peasley bequest 
in each of the parishes mentioned. Probably the old school in Abing- 
don Parish was moved to a more satisfactory location than it had had 
before 1756.°° 


Accomac Parish 1n Accomac County 


In 1724 it was reported from Accomac Parish that there was in 
the parish, 

a school endowed by one Mr. Sandford, late of London. John Moragh, an Irish 
man, is at present Master of it.* 

Sandford had formerly lived in Accomac, but his will was drawn 
up in London and proved there in 1710.** The endowment was given 
for the benefit, better learning, and education of poor children, whose parents 
are esteemed unable to give them learning, living in the upper part of 
Accomack county, in Virginia. 

The property, the rents and profits of which went to the school, 
consisted of three tracts of land containing 3420 acres. The manage- 
ment of the school was placed in the hands of the county commis- 
sioners living in Accomac Parish, the church wardens, and the ves- 
try.*4 Probably the school was opened within a year or two after 
1710 and continued in operation, although no facts concerning the 
school itself except those given by the minister as stated above have 
been found. 


30No attempt has here been made to determine what was done with the Peasley 
school or property after the colonial period, but it appears from a statement in 
Colonial Churches of Virginia made by Rev. W. B. Lee, the rector of Abingdon 
Parish in 1908, that ‘‘some years ago this bequest was changed by the Virginia 
Legislature to benefit the poor of Gloucester county.’’ The rector also speaks of 
a parishioner, Mr. Joe Deal, who ‘‘owned a part of the Free School Tract, and 
lived and died in the original Peasley house, built about 1655” (Colonzal 
Churches of Virginia, pp. 185, 187). 

31Perry, Historical Collections, I, p. 302. 

Virginia Magazine of History, XVIII, p. 180. 

3%3Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, I, p. 265. 

“Joid., p. 265. 


42 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


Washington Parish 1n Westmoreland County 


The minister of Washington Parish reported in 1724 as follows: 

The gentleman who bequeathed my Glebe to the parish left the whole tract 
(containing 440 acres), to be disposed of by the Vestry for the better maintenance 
of a minister and schoolmaster, the Vestry made no division of the land, but gave 
it to me as a glebe, with this proviso, that I provide a sufficient person to instruct 
the youth in reading, writing and arithmetic under my inspection, which con- 
dition I have complied with.* 

The minister’s report does not indicate who made the gift to the 
parish, but Tyler states that the donor was William Horton,** who, 
as shown in the county records, made a bequest to Washington 
Parish in a will drawn up in 1700. Very probably the school was 
started shortly after the donor’s death, but the statement by the 
minister, Lawrence DeButts, that ‘‘the Vestry made no division of 
the land, but gave it to me as a glebe” suggests that he may have 
been the first minister in the parish who had had the use of the land 
and that the school was not opened until after his incumbency began. 
DeButts left England some time after July, 1721.7 The vestry 
record of Washington Parish is not in existence and no facts concern- 
ing the Horton School except those given above appear. We may 
assume, however, that the school was kept in operation after 1721 
at least, even though it probably was necessary to allow the master 
to take in pay pupils. The conduct of the school by the parish 
minister would have met the requirements of the will, and it may be 
that this was the arrangement sometimes made. 


St. Stephen’s Parish in Northumberland County 


It seems probable that in addition to the five parish free schools 
established before 1724 there was one other school in operation for 
.a time at least which was not in charge of parish officials. While 
the school did not belong to the parish in which it was located we 
may consider it here because it apparently completes the list of 
endowed schools in operation before 1724, and because the will which 
provided for it supplies information which aids in determining facts 
in regard to the character of the other schools which have been men- 
tioned. The office of minister in St. Stephen’s Parish** was vacant in 
1724, so that no report was made for it then, but the county records 


Perry, Hutstortcal Collections, I, p. 292. 

6 Wiliam and Mary College Quarterly, VI, p. 82. 

37Fothergill, A List of Emigrant Ministers to America, p. 24. 

38There was also a St. Stephen’s Parish in King and Queen County. 


Endowed Parish Schools 43 


show that in 1702 John Farnefold, the minister of the parish, who 
died in that year, left a part of his property for the establishment 
and maintenance of a school for poor children belonging to the parish. 
The section of the will which indicates his intention is as follows: 

I give 100 acres where I now live for the maintenance of a free school to be 
called Winchester schoole for fower or five poore children belonging to ye parish 
and to be taught gratis & to have their dyett lodging & washing & when they can 
read the Bible & write a legible hand to dismiss them & take in more, such as my 
exors., shall think fitt, and for the benefitt of the said school I give five cows anda 
Bull, six ewes, and a ram, a carthorse & cart and two breeding sowes, & that my 
two mulatto girles Frances and Lucy Murrey have a yeare’s schooling & be free 
when they arrive at the age of 22 years to whom I give a sow shote to each, & 
for further encouragement of a schoolmaster, I give dyett, lodging & washing and 
500 pds of tobacco & a horse, Bridle & Saddle to ride on during his stay, the place 
where the school house is to be erected my will is to have it neare my dwelling 
house, some part of which may serve for a school house till another more con- 
veniently be built. Item what schoole books I have in my study I leave for ye 
benefit of ye schoole. Then my wil] is that some of my estate be sold for the 
maintenance of the said schoole except what my exors., shall think fitt to select 
necessary for use as bedding, potts, & pewter. . . .If the school fail for want of 
maintenance which I hope it will not give that hundred acres &all the rest of my 
land to Farnefold Nutt.*9 


It was clearly Farnefold’s purpose to establish a boarding school, 
but it does not seem that he made sufficient provision for the opera- 
tion of such an establishment for any length of time. The only 
evidence with regard to the school outside of the will is in a land patent 
to Farnefold Nutt which records that “John Farnefold, clerk, by his 
last will gave one hundred acres of land for ye use of a Free €chool.*° 
The school was probably in operation for some years, but the small 
size of the foundation gift and the lack of reference to it in documents 
of a later period may mean that it was discontinued ‘‘for want of 
maintenance’”’ which Farnefold had foreseen as a possibility. The 
alternative gift of the property to Nutt in case of its failure suggests 
that his interest may have interfered with the continued operation 
of the school. 3 

There was one other bequest made before 1724 with the intent 
of founding a free parish school, but the evidence indicates that the 
purpose of the donor was not carried out. In 1685 William Gordon 
left one hundred acres of land to Christ Church Parish in Middlesex 
~ 89 William and Mary College Quarierly, XVII, pp. 245-46. Farnefold seems to 
have named his school after Winchester Grammar School, which suggests that at 
one time he may have been a student there. He was a member of the first board 


of trustees of William and Mary College. 
49Virginia Magazine of History, IV, p. 31. 


44 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


County to establish a free school.*4 The vestry record of the parish, 
which begins with the year 1670, contains no reference to the gift 
before 1727, in which year it was ordered by the vestry, 

That the church wardens procure copies of the will of Mr. William Gordon 
relating to Land given to this parish for a free school.” 

There is no further record in the vestry book relating to the 
Gordon bequest until 1748, at which time the parish began to receive 
annually 500 pounds of tobacco which was “‘employed towards the 
schooling of poor children.’’42 The income from the land was clearly 
insufficient to establish and maintain a free school, but the fact that 
the vestrymen did not take action regarding the grant until 1727 
suggests that they lacked interest in the education of the poor.” 

Besides the gifts to parishes made before 1724 for the foundation 
of free schools there was one bequest made for the purpose of aiding 
in the support of a parish school. In 1668 Henry King, a resident of 
Upper Parish, Nansemond County, bequeathed one hundred acres 
of land to the parish ‘‘towards the maintenance of a free school.’’® 
The existing vestry book of Upper Parish covers only the period after 
1744, but in this period there is no reference to the King bequest. 
The minister of the parish in 1724 reported that there was then “‘no 
public school’ in it*® and no evidence has been found to show that 


“William and Mary College, Quarterly, VI, p. 82. 

“MS. vestry record for October 10, 1727. 

4%7Tbid., record for years 1748 to 1767. 

“Bruce (Institutional History of Virginia, I, 358) says with reference to the 
Gordon bequest, 

“William Gordon, of Middlesex, presented one hundred acres of valuable land 
as an endowment for a free school; and with the proceeds obtained from the sale 
of crops of this plantation, a schoolhouse was soon erected, and a regular teacher 
employed, who, for some years, gave instruction, without expense, to the children 
in attendance.”’ 

The reference given as source for the statement quoted is an article by Tyler, 
William and Mary College Quarterly, VI, 82. The statement in the Quarterly 
is as follows: 

In Middlesex, in 1685, William Gordon gave one hundred acres of land for a 
free school, on which land a schoolhouse was built; and school was conducted for 
some years. In 1700 the court of Middlesex reported that the said school land 
“‘now lyeth idle.”’ 

Tyler does not indicate the source of his information, but presumably the 
year of the bequest is given in the court record of wills. The data taken from 
the vestry record and given above make it seem improbable that the school was 
actually established. 

*The part of the will relating to the gift is as follows: 

I give one hundred Acres of land lieing & beinge Adjacent to Mr. England and 
being exchanged for land of myne now in the possession of Mr. England to this 
parrish where I now live towards the maintenance of a free school. (Will printed 
in William and Mary College Quarterly, V, p. 112). 

6Perry, Historical Documents, I, p. 296. 


Endowed Parish Schools 45 


there was one later. Probably the lack of a school to which the 
income from the King land could be given and the relative smallness 
of the gift explain the inaction of the vestrymen who were the officers 
responsible for the administration of the property. In 1754 the 
parish built a workhouse in which a number of children were cared 
for and taught, and it may be that the income from the King gift 
was placed in the parish funds without record and used for the support 
of this undertaking. 

The data which have been presented above show that there were 
in Virginia in1724 five endowed parish schools and that these probably 
constituted all but one of the endowed free schools in the colony at 
the time. The chief sources yielding information concerning the 
schools before 1724 are first the county, parish and colonial records, 
and second, the reports of the ministers in the colony to the Bishop 
of London. It is a significant fact that the number of endowed 
schools reported by the ministers corresponds closely with the number 
shown by other sources to have been in existence. If it had been 
found that there were several endowed schools which were not re- 
ported in 1724, either within the limits of the parishes reported upon 
or outside of them, it might be assumed that further investigation 
would reveal the existence of others. As has been stated, the county 
records have not been studied systematically enough to make it cer- 
tain that all school facts they contain have been gleaned, but the cor- 
respondence between the survey report of 1724 and what the study 
of the county records already made has revealed makes it seem likely 
that the examination of them by various students has been fairly 
exhaustive. This applies to the period after 1724 as well as that 
before, and if this view is correct it justifies the drawing of conclusions 
regarding schools in the later period on the basis of what has already 
been found in the county records and published and what is revealed 
by the other available sources. 

The parish schools founded before 1724 were the Syms, Eaton, 
Peasley, Sandford, and Horton schools. It was the custom for the 
founders of the free schools to place their management in the hands 
of parish or parish and county officials, making them in a sense 
public schools. The Syms School and the Eaton School were both 
in Elizabeth City Parish, so that only four of the twenty-nine 
parishes reported upon by the ministers in 1724 had endowed schools. 
In view of the fact that among the twenty-nine older and more 


46 Parish Education tn Colontal Virginia 


thickly populated parishes only four had such institutions, it is not 
strange that in the twenty-six not reported upon the record of only 
one has been found. 


ENDOWED PARISH SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED AFTER 1724 


In the period after 1724 there were four endowed parish schools~ 
added to those in existence before that year. One of these was the 
second Peasley School to which reference has been made. 


Bruton Parish in James County 


In 1742 Mrs. Mary Whaley left to the care of the minister and 
church wardens of Bruton Parish, as representatives of the parish, 
a charity school known as Mattey’s School, which she had established 
some years previously in memory of her son Matthew. The fol- 
lowing extract from her will shows the nature of the gift and the 
character of the school: 


I give devise and bequeath to the minister and churchwardens for the time 
being of the said parish of Bruton in the county of York in the said Colony of 
Virginia and their successors a certain piece of land in the said parish of Bruton 
containing by estimation ten acres little more or less together with Mattey’s 
schoolhouse and a Dwelling house lately erected and built thereon for the use-of a 
schoolmaster (to teach the neediest children of the Same parish who shall be 
offered in the art of reading writing and arithmetic). .... 

I give to Mattey’s School aforesaid the sum of Fifty pounds sterling to be 
paid to the said minister and churchwardens for the time being and their successors 
at the rate of ten pounds a year for the use of the same school.*” 


The money grant to the school was not made available during the 
colonial period,** but the trustees apparently had no difficulty in getting 
a master to teach a number of poor children in return for the use of 
the property and the right which was probably given him of taking 
in pay pupils. In 1750 the trustees stated that the “school and the 
Teaching therein hath continued’ without interruption after the 
death of Mrs. Whaley in 1742.4 In 1766 they placed the following 
advertisement in the Willzamsburg Gazette: 


Mattey Free School, Williamsburg, Sep. 4, 1766. 
The trustees for Mrs. Whaley’s charity to Mattey’s School (the minister and 
churchwardens of Bruton Parish) give this notice, that in the forenoone of Monday 
they will meet in the church of Williamsburg to choose a Master for that school. 


47William and Mary College Quarterly, IV, pp. 10, 13. The Whaley will as 
well as other source material bearing on the history of the Mattey School has 
been published by Lyon G. Tyler in the Quarterly. 

487bid., VI, p. 79. 

49Tbid., IV, p. 7. 


Endowed Parish Schools 47 


They hope to have it in their power to make such proposals as shall encourage a 
diligent and useful person to accept of the office.*? 


In 1768 the Gazette announced that Mr. William Rose had 
succeeded the late Mr. Jacob Bruce as master.®! While the Mattey 
School did not have as great an endowment as some of the other 
parish schools, its location in Williamsburg favored it, and it probably 
was in successful operation from 1742 until the end of the colonial 
period, at any rate.” 


Suffolk Parish in Nansemond County 


Some time before 1731 John Yeates of Suffolk Parish in Nanse- 
mond County established two schools for the education of the chil- 
dren in the neighborhoodin which he lived. Inhis will, drawn up in 
1731, he provided by endowment for the support of the schools and 
arranged that the members of the parish vestry resident in the part of 
the parish near his home should manage them.®? Nothing concerning the 
conduct of the schools after 1731 has been found, but the income from 
the bequest was apparently sufficient to carry out Yeates’ intentions, 
for in 1804 after the property had been converted it consisted in 
nineteen slaves who were hired out for forty-eight pounds annually. 


5°William and Mary College Quarterly, iV, p. 10. 

‘i7bid., X XVII, p. 209. 

52The vestry book of Bruton Parish is lost or destroyed, and the extracts from 
it which were published in 1855 in The Church Review and Ecclesiastical Record 
contain no reference to the Mattey School. 

8Veates’ will is given in the Virginia School Report for 1885, Third Part, pp. 
230-31. The sections relating to the schools are as follows: 

“T give and bequeath all my land or lands in Virginia, and all the rents and 
profits of the same to the following use and uses: The rents thereof, now by lease or 
otherwise, may be converted hereafter to the use of a free-school or schools, in the 
lower part of Nansemond, formerly so called, being the parish I have so long lived 
in, among such friendly neighbors; and that there may be two school-houses 
continued in the same places already fixed, which I have built, so that one school- 
house will be very convenient for the children of the one side of Bennett’s Creek, 
and the other on the other side thereof, which will complete that part of the parish, 
as formerly I have done; and by that means, with God’s blessing, the most or all 
of the children in those parts will be educated from the Glebe down to the extent 
of that part of the parish lying on the south side of Nansemond river, which for- 
merly was called the Lower Parish of Nansemond.”’ 

“‘What books I haveor shall give for the use of the school or schools, may lie in 
the desk in the schoolhouse, under lock and key, in each schoolhouse as I have 
provided, that when children have read those books they may be there ready for 
other children also.” 

The will then provides for a gift of 10£, ‘‘to buy books for the poorer sort of 
inhabitants in the parish, as the Whole Duty of Man; also for procuring Testa- 
ments, Psalters, Primers, for my several schools.”’ 

The provision regarding the management of the property is as follows: 

“Tt is my will and desire that those gentlemen vestrymen living this side of 
Nansemond river may have the management of the disposal of the rent yearly.”’ 

4Ibid., p. 230. 


48 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


Besides the Yeates schools and the Mattey School there were a 
number of endowed schools founded in the latter part of the colonial 
period, but none of them seems to have been given to a parish or 
placed in charge of parish officials.°> There were, however, several 
gifts of property to parishes for the purpose of providing free educa- 
tion for poor children in private schools or of assisting in such pro- 
vision. The largest grant for the support of education of the poor 
of which record has been found is that of Humphrey Hill of the Parish 
of St. Stephen’s in King and Queen County. In 1775 Hill gave 500 
pounds to the minister, wardens, and vestrymen of the parish, 


to be by them put out at interest on land security, and the interest becoming 
due or arising thereon to be annually paid to such schoolmasters as shall teach one 
or more children whose parents are unable to pay for the instruction of such 
child or children themselves.** 


NUMBER, MANAGEMENT, AND CHARACTER OF PARISH SCHOOLS, 1634-1775 


The data which have been presented show that there were in 
colonial Virginia nine endowed parish schools six of which were 
entirely in the control of parish officials, the others being in charge 
of boards of trustees made up of both parish and county officers. 
Since only seven of the ninety parishes existing at the end of the colonial 
period had endowed schools, it is clear that we should look upon them 
as being exceptional rather than common arrangements for educating 
parish children. The work of parish endowed schools was to an 
extent supplemented by several free schools for poor children which 
were not in control of public officials but these were fewer in number 
and of less consequence than the others. The distinction between 
the parish endowed schools and the similar institutions not under 
parish control is of course of little significance except for the fact 
that we are here concerned with public activity with the idea of 


55Tn 1760, or thereabouts, William Hunter editor of the Williambsurg Gazette, be- 
queathed property for the support of a negro schoolin Williamsburg. Fora time 
this school admitted white children as well as negroes. This fact is brought out in 
a letter of Rev. C. Nicholas to Rev. John Waring, who was an official of the S. P. 
G. in London. Nicholas states that, 

“Soon after Mr. Hunter’s Death I had the number of children increased to 30 
& obliged the mistress that there might be no partiality shewn to white scholars, 
of which she then had about a dozen, to discharge them all & this at the Risque of 
the Displeasure of their Parents, with whom she was in high Repute for her 
‘Care & Method of Teaching” (S. P. G. Minute Book C, p. 69). es 

Mrs. Elizabeth Stith in 1774 left a bequest of 120 pounds to endow scholar- 
ships for six poor children in a school in Smithfield in Isle of Wight County which 
she had established in 1753 (William and Mary College Quarterly, V, 118). 

6 William and Mary College Quarterly, XVII, p. 247. 


Endowed Parish Schools 49 


determining its extent and character and of finding the elementsin 
it which might serve as a basis for later public education.” 

It seems clear that the endowed parish schools.as a whole were 
not considered very seriously or managed very carefully by those 
to whose care they were entrusted. The Eaton School was probably 
the most important of the free schools, but as has been shown above, 
its trustees for a long period neglected properly to make use of and 
guard its property or supervise the conduct of the school. The evi- 
dence indicates that the same is true of the Syms and Peasley 
schools. In the case of the other schools there is no basis for a judg- 
ment with regard to their management. The attitude of those in 
control of the schools may have been partially a reflection of the 
difficult conditions under which the institutions operated, making 
full success inherently impossible. No doubt the wide distribution 
of the population interfered with attendance, and probably the poor 
did not show much of a desire to make use of their educational 
opportunities. The large size of the parishes made it impossible for 
a school to serve more than a small district in its immediate neighbor- 
hood so that it could not be looked upon as a community enterprise 
of concern to the parish as a whole. But if the controlling class to 
which the parish school trustees belonged had had a keen interest 
in the education of the poor or had appreciated fully their responsi- 
bility, they would have exercised a closer supervision of their trust 
and would have shown their concern in a variety of ways which would 
have been evidenced in the records. At no time did the parish or 
colonial authorities attempt to supplement the income of the schools 
so that their work might be improved or extended. From the stand- 
point of later development of public activity in education the evidence 
of a desire on the part of the trustees to make the most of the free 
schools would have been more significant than the particular degree 
of success attained in their operation. 

With the possible exception of the Eaton School the endowed 
parish schools in colonial Virginia were of the elementary vernacular 
type rather than Latin schools or institutions combining instruction 
in English and Latin. That is, they were essentially like the endowed 
non-classical schools of England to which reference has been made, 

57Cubberley (Public Education in the Untted States, p. 22) states that in colonial 
Virginia there were ‘‘church charity schools for some of the children of the poorer 
members.’’ The parish free endowed schools were the nearest approach to in- 


stitutions of the type mentioned by him, for in no case did the Established Church 
in Virginia provide a school. 


50 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


That this was the fact is shown directly in the cases of the Horton, 
Farnefold, Mattey, and Yeates schools. The only evidence suggest- 
ing that Latin was taught in any of the schools is in the use of the 
term ‘‘free school” in application to them and in the requirement of 
the master of the Eaton School in 1697 that he should instruct in 
“sramer learninge.”’ 

The application of the term “free school’ to the endowed estab- 
lishments of the type considered is sometimes taken to mean that 
they gave Latin instruction,°® and there is a slight basis in colonial 
usage for this interpretation.*® A Virginia statute of 1656 provided 
for the apprenticing of orphan boys where the estates ‘“‘will not reach 
to a free education,’’®® thereby implying that there was a distinction 
between the English instruction which a master was required by law 
to give his apprentice and a “‘free education’ suitable for boys in 
families of property. In England this education consisted mainly in 
Latin instruction and it was commonly given in Latin grammar 
schools to which the term ‘‘free school’’ was often applied. In 
1660-61 the General Assembly provided for the purchase of land for 
a “‘colledge and freeschoole,’’® although the project was not then car- 
ried out. In 1690 Governor Nicholson proposed the revival of the 
“design of a free school and colledge.”” The interest of those who were 
back of the plan was evidently not in establishing a school where 
education free from cost could be given; it was rather in providing an 


58In referring to the free schools in Virginia in the seventeenth century, Bruce 
(Institutional History of Virginia, I, p. 350) speaks of their models as being the 
endowed grammar schools of England and says, ‘‘There was not a single shire in 
England lacking one of these fine grammar schools.’’ While it is likely that if 
conditions in Virginia had been more favorable free grammar schools would have 
been established there, it is clear that the models for the schools actually es- 
tablished were the non-classical schools of England rather than the Latin schools. 

59In reference to the use of ‘“‘free school” in connection with English grammar 
schoolsin the 16thand 17th centuries, Leach (English Schools at the Reformation, p. 
110) says, ‘‘What was the meaning of Free School, or Free Grammar School at this 
time? Dr. Johnson defined it to mean, and that is the obvious meaning of it, a 
school that is free,—where no payment is made for tuition fees.’’ Jackson 
(School Support in Colonial Massachusetts, p. 86) says with respect to the meaning 
of the term ‘‘free school’’ as used in Massachusetts, ‘‘On the basis of the 
records themselves we may assert that the primary meaning of the term ‘free 
school’ as used in Massachusetts meant freedom from charges for being taught.’’ 
However, this statement is not opposed to the view that the term was occasionally 
used to indicate a Latin school. In 1753 there were in Boston two free writing 
schools and one free Latin school. In the town records for that year a com- 
mittee reported that they had ‘‘also obtained Copys of the Grant, Survey, and 
Return of one Thousand Acres of Land for the Free School of Boston.’’ (Boston 
Town Records, 1729-1742, p. 110). Thisisin evident reference to the Latin school. 

60Hening, Statutes, I, p. 416. 

S\Hening, II, 25. A similar use of the term occurs in a Maryland law of 1663 
(Clews, p. 408). 


Endowed Parish Schools 51 


opportunity for students to prepare themselves to meet the college 
entrance requirements. 


If there were many other illustrations in Virginia colonial records of 
the use of “‘free’’ with an implication like that indicated above, there 
might be a presumption in the case of any free school that it gave 
instruction in Latin unless there is positive evidence to the contrary. 
In fact the instances mentioned are the only ones found in the course 
of the present study.” The typical use of “‘free school’’ as meaning 
a school free from tuition for those for whom it was founded is shown 
in Farnefold’s will given above. Property was given to found, 

a free school . . . for fower or five poore children. . . to be taught gratis... & 
when they can read the Bible & write a legible hand to dismiss them. 

The only parishes reported in 1724 as having within their limits a 
Latin school were Bruton and Elizabeth City. The Bruton Parish 
school was the ‘““Grammar School’’ connected with the College, while 
the school in Elizabeth City Parish was a “‘private school.’”’ The em- 
phasis which the minister of Elizabeth City Parish put upon the 
fact that Latin and Greek, in addition to reading, writing, and cipher- 
ing, were taught in the private school without mentioning them as 
subjects taught in the Syms School or the Eaton School tends to 
show that neither of the endowed schools at the time regularly gave 
Latin instruction. None of the general treatises on conditions and 
customs in Virginia mentions Latin asa subject taught in any of the 
free schools. In Hugh Jones’ Present State of Virginia, published in 
1724, there is a proposed plan of education for the colony. Jones 
speaks of the existence of reading and writing schools in the parishes, 
and then says, 


Let such lads as have been taught to read and write in those schools, be 
admitted into the Grammar School at the College.® 


®It may have been that Governor Berkeley in his well-known statement con- 
cerning education in Virginia in 1671 used ‘‘free schools”’ in its exceptional mean- 
ing. He said, ‘‘But I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I 
hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience 
and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them’’ (Hening, 
II, 37). If we should understand that Berkeley was referring to Latin schools, 
which is quite possible, his statement should be accepted as evidence that Latin 
was not taught in the Eaton or Syms free schools which were then in operation. 
This interpretation makes it unnecessary to conclude that his statement was 
false. There is a suggestion that this interpretation may be correct in the fact 
that in the apprentice law of 1656 and the enactment of 1660-61 providing land 
“for a colledge and freeschoole,’’ which were passed in his administration, ‘‘free”’ 
is used to indicate Latin school instruction—as has been shown above. 

Present State of Virginia, p. 84. 


52 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


If the several free schools of the time were giving Latin instruction, 
he probably would have recognized the fact in his scheme. 

The requirement that the master of the Eaton School in 1697 
should instruct in “‘gramer learninge’”’ as well as in English must be 
taken to mean that at the time Latin grammar was taught in the 
school. It seems likely that for a time following and preceding 1697 
the subject was taught, for the conditions under which the school ' 
operated did not change. That Latin was not taught regularly in 
the school or that it was a minor interest is shown by what has been 
brought out above. Eaton did not say in his will what subjects 
were to be taught, but that his use of ‘‘free school’”’ was the customary 
one is indicated by his statement that in it ‘‘no free education”’ should 
be given except to those for whom it was founded. 

Except in the case of the Eaton School, wherever there is any di- 
rect evidence regarding subjects taught in the free parish schools 
it shows that they were the branches commonly taught in the vernac- 
ular schools of the time—reading and writing, or reading, writing, and 
arithmetic—and we may assume that these subjects were taught in 
all of them. The requirement that the master of the Eaton School 
should instruct ‘‘all such children in English” as came to him merely 
meant that he should give instruction in the subjects commonly 
taught in the vernacular. Although religion was not definitely 
prescribed as a subject of instruction as were reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, it is probable that the teachers followed the universal 
custom of the time, catechizing children and using religious material 
in reading. Farnefold provided in his will that the children who 
should be in attendance at his school at any time were to be replaced 
by others as soon as they could “read the Bible and write a legible 
hand.’ In the will of John Yeates to which reference has been made 
there is provision for a gift for procuring ‘‘Testaments, Psalters, 
Primers, for my several schools.’”’ The minister reporting for Hen- 
rico Parish in 1724 said that children in private schools were cate- 
chized by their teachers,® and if this was the case in the private 
schools it was no doubt the practice in the free schools. Some of 
the apprenticeship laws required masters to instruct in the Christian 


Graves, in his History of Education in Modern Times, p. 85, states that the 
free schools increased in number in the 18th century ‘‘and their courses were 
muchimproved.” There is no evidence in the case of any of the schools showing a 
change or improvement in the course of study. 

Perry, Historical Documents, I, p. 305. 


Endowed Parish Schools 53 


religion the children bound to them,® and in accordance with this 
provision the indentures often stipulated that apprentices should be 
taught so far as to be able to read the Bible. 

It was evidently the primary purpose of the founders of the 
endowed schools in Virginia to provide education for the poor. In 
the cases of the Farnefold, Sandford, and Mattey schools this is 
specifically stated as the intention. Eaton spoke in his will of the 
education of ‘‘children,”’ but that this was understood to mean poor 
children is indicated in the Act of 1759 incorporating the trustees 
of the Eaton School where they are referred to as “‘the proper objects 
of the pious founder’s charity.”’ Yeates seems to have been the only 
founder who had in mind provision for all the children of a district. 
In providing educational facilities for the poor the men who endowed 
the schools seem to have been moved less by religious interest than 
were those who established the English schools for the poor or the 
public schools in New England.” ‘They did not indicate in their 
wills that they had pious intentions nor do they mention religious 
upbringing or instruction. While they no doubt assumed that the 
schools they founded would teach religion, according to the custom 
of the time, their concern apparently was primarily in giving the poor 
an opportunity to better themselves. Probably the lack of religious 
motives back of the settlement of Virginia and the general conformity 
among the people to the beliefs of the Established Church made 
religious instruction in schools seem less important than in most of 
the other colonies. The point of significance here is that the lack of 


sHening, I, 260-61. 

The following are typical statements showing the emphasis on religion in 
English charity education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 
Basingstoke in 1618 James Deane left 13£tobe devotedto the payment of a 
petty schoolmaster, ‘‘who shall teach little children to write and read but es- 
pecially to read and to learn the catechism in the principles of religion’’ (quoted 
by Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 153). In An Account of Charity Schools 
Lately Erected, published in 1709, it is stated that the chief design of the schools 
‘is for the Education of Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian 
Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England... .’’ The im- 
portance attached to religious education in the Puritan colonies is suggested by 
the following extract from the Connecticut code of 1656: Parents and masters 
must educate the children in their charge so that they ‘“‘may, through God’s 
blessing, attain at least somuchasto be able duly to read the Scriptures and 
other good and profitable printed books in the English tongue, being 
their native language, and in some competent measure to understand the main 
grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation, and to give a 
due answer to such plain and ordinary questions as. . . may be propounded 
concerning the same’”’ (Clews, Colonial Educational Legislation, p. 79). No such 
statements as the above are found in the sources dealing with education in colonial 
Virginia. 


54 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


a strong religious purpose kept down the number of endowed institu- 
tions and lessened in a measure the interest of those in whose charge 
the schools were left. 

Although it was the object of the founders of the parish free schoois 
to provide education for the poor, it is evident that children in better 
class families as well as those whose parents could not afford to pay for 
their tuition commonly received instruction in them. Probably it 
was ordinarily expected that parents who were able to pay tuition 
should do so, for in most cases the income from the foundation grant 
was small. Beverley, writing in 1705, spoke of the ‘‘allowance’”’ 
paid the masters of the endowed schools by ‘‘gentlemen’’ whose sons 
attended them.®* The perquisites referred to in the advertisement 
appearing in the Williamsburg Gazette in 1753, which the master of 
the Syms School received in addition to the income from the school 
farm, very probably were in the form of fees paid by some of the 
pupils. The income from the Mattey School was clearly insufficient 
to support a master. We have seen that for some time previous to 
1759 children of parents ‘‘well able to pay for their education”’ had 
attended the Eaton School without charge, but that the abuse was 
then corrected.®® 

In specifying who should be instructed in the endowed parish 
schools the founders speak of ‘‘children” without indicating whether 
they intended that girls should attend. While it is likely that girls 
in colonial Virginia received schooling less commonly than boys, in 
accordance with the general custom of the time, there is sufficient 
evidence to show that many in both the upper and lower classes were 
given an education. The common provision in indentures binding 
girls to apprenticeship, that they should be taught to read, shows an 
attitude favorable to their education. These facts taken in connec- 
tion with the lack of any suggestion of discrimination against them 
makes it seem probable that they attended the public parish schools.”° 


88Reverley, History of Virginia, p. 40. 

68°Cubberley (Public Education in the United States, p. 21) speaks of Virginia as 
illustrating the ‘‘non-state interference, pauper-school attitude,’ apparently 
meaning that the endowed free schools were pauper schools. The attendance of 
children from the better class shows that the schools were not looked down upon. 
The situation of the children who were admitted without charge was not unlike 
that of foundationers in the endowed English grammar schools. 

The only suggestion that girls may not have attended the endowed schools 
which ‘has been found in the course of the present study is in a statement in 
Beverley’s History having to do with the situation in 1705. In reference to 
support of the schools Beverley said that besides incomes from foundation grants 
the masters received ‘‘an additional allowance which gentlemen give with their 


Endowed Parish Schools 55 


There is no statement in the sources showing exactly how many 
pupils there were at any time in any of the endowed parish schools. 
It is probable that the children of appropriate age who lived sufficient- 
ly near a school attended it, but their number must have been relative- 
ly small. According to the ministers who reported in 1724 there 
was on the average one family per square mile in the parishes having 
endowed schools,” and Elizabeth City, relatively the most thickly 
populated parish, had only slightly more than this. All of the parish 
institutions which have been mentioned were located on the plan- 
tations which the founders gave for their support except the Mattey 
School and possibly the Yeates schools. None of the founders, with 
the above exceptions, seems to have questioned the suitability of his 
farm from the standpoint of nearness to the homes of children whose 
parents might wish them to attend, but this is presumably a re- 
flection of the fact that there was little concentration of population 
to be taken into account. If the situation had been otherwise each 
donor probably would have provided for the sale or lease of his 
property and the establishment of a school in a section where homes 
were relatively close together. 

In the case of the Peasley School we have direct evidence show- 
ing that the distance from homes interfered with attendance. ‘The 
school was established in the seventeenth century, but until 1756, 
when the trustees were incorporated, there were so “few children’ 
frequenting it because of its “inconvenient situation’”’ that it had been 
of little benefit. Farnefold made detailed provision in his will for a 
free school in which ‘“‘fower or five poore children’’ were to be edu- 
cated and maintained. It seems likely that his reason for not 
suggesting that day pupils living near his plantation might attend 
and thus provide sufficient work for the master and enlarge the 
service of the school was that he thought the school would not be 
near enough to the homes of the children to allow them to attend. 
An indication of the influence of the plantation system in inter- 
fering with efforts to instruct children in groups is given in the 
statement of the minister in South Farnham Parish in 1724 with 
reference to his practice in catechizing on Sunday.” He stated that 


sons’ implying that the daughters in the upper class families at least did not 
attend. The only direct reference in the wills of founders of endowed schools to 
the instruction of girls is in Farnefold’s will, quoted above, where provision is 
made for a year’s schooling of two mulatto girls. This suggests that white girls 
were not discriminated against. 

Perry, Historical Documents, I, pp. 262-318. 

“Iind., I, p. 286. 


56 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


“the remoteness of the parishioners from church prevents their 
sending their children to be catechized.’”’ South Farnham at the 
time was one of the relatively more densely populated parishes.” 
The Eaton School apparently had a larger number of pupils than 
any other similar institution. Reference has been made to the asser- 
tion in the Act of 1759 incorporating its trustees that, 
the said foundation hath been abused by admitting a great number of children 
into the said school, whose parents are well able to pay for their education. 
The statement does not mean that at any one time there had 
been a great number of children of the well-to-do in the school; it 
means, rather, that the total number of better class children who had 
attended over a period of years was large, and that their free edu- 
cation constituted an abuse. However, it is probable that nothing 
would have been done to limit or prohibit their attendance if a 
fairly large number had not sought instruction in it. The relatively 
good attendance in the Eaton School may be accounted for partially 
by the fact that Elizabeth City Parish in which it was situated had a 


®The following extract from The Present State of Virginia, written in 1697 
by Hartwell, Chilton, and Blair, is an aid in visualizing the condition of affairs 
at the middle of the colonial period. The system of industry which brought 
about the condition described continued throughout the colonial period. 

‘As to the outward Appearance, it looks all like a wild Desert; the Highlands 
overgrown with Trees, and the Lowlands sunk with Water, Marsh, and Swamp: 
The few Plantations and clear’d Grounds bearing no proportion to the rough and 
uncultivated . . . perhaps not the hundredth Part of the Country is yet clear’d 
from the Woods, and not one Foot of the Marsh and Swamp drained, as fast as the 
Ground is worn out with Tobacco and Corn, it runs up again in underwoods, and 
in many Places of the Country, that which has been cleared is thicker in Woods 
than it was before the clearing. It is but in few Places that the Plough is made 
use of, for in their first clearing they never grub up the Stumps, but cut the Trees 
down about two or three Foot from the Ground; so that all the Roots and Stumps 
being left, that Ground must be tended with Hoes, and by that time the Stumps 
are rotten the Ground is worn out; and having fresh Land enough, of which they 
must clear some for Firewood, they take but little care to recruit the old Fields’’.. . 
(pp. 6 and 7). 

The relation between education and the conditions suggested above is pointed 
out by various contemporary writers. The following is from a statement made in 
1705. 

“Cohabitation would highly advance Learning and school education: for this 
flourishes only in such places, for the smallest and meanest of Schools cannot be 
maintained without a competent number of Scholars, which has been our great 
discouragement in Virginia and Maryland where the number to be entertained 
together are too few to maintain any master or mistress, who are necessitated to 
shift from place to place, until they cannot live at all by that Calling: so that 
in many remote corners many families never had opportunities of schools, and 
therefore remain without all knowledge of Letters, which we have no hopes of 
regulating or preventing without Towns and Cohabitation’”’ (Francis Makemie, 
‘A Plain and Friendly Perswasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland, 
1705’, Va. Mag. of Hist. and Biog., IV, p. 255). 


Endowed Parish Schools 57 


population less widely distributed than any other which had an 
endowed school excepting Bruton Parish. The school also seems to 
have been the best of the endowed institutions, as is suggested by the 
fact that Latin was taught in it at least for a time. 


CHAPTER IV 
4 EDUCATION IN THE PARISH WORKHOUSE 


ENGLISH WORKHOUSE EDUCATION 


The English workhouses of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, with which the Virginia colonists were familiar, were often 
educational institutions as well as establishments for the care and 
employment of the poor. The common idea among the many 
variations in these houses of industry was that the inmates, whether 
children or adults, should aid in their support as far as possible by 
engaging in various occupations, usually in converting textiles, and in 
order to make the plan of production effective it was often necessary 
to give a small amount of trade instruction.1 In the seventeenth 
century, particularly before the Civil War, when the workhouses were 
at their best as industrial establishments,” intensive trade education 
was also given to youths of apprentice age in some of the institutions 
then in operation, with the purpose of developing skilled workers 
who could later maintain themselves and contribute to the industrial 
good of the country.’ 

One of the best industrial schools within a workhouse was that of 
the London Bridewell as conducted in the first half of the seventeenth 
century, in which training in numerous occupations was given to the 
youths confined there at the hands of arts masters to whom they were 
apprenticed. ‘‘Christ’s Hospital at Ipswich, the Hospital at Reading, 


1Leonard, English Poor Relief, pp. 225-27; Dunlop, English Apprenticeship , 
p. 248; Gray, A History of English Philanthropy, p. 114. 

2Gray, pp. 216, 220; Leonard, p. 238. 

®Leonard, pi 217, 

4In a report of the London Bridewell made in 1630-31, quoted by Leonard, 
p. 354, there is the following statement concerning the number of apprentices and 
their trades: 

“Four Silkeweavers who doe keepe poore children taken vp in the streets or 
otherwise distressed as their apprentices to the number of fortye & sixe. 

Two Pinmakers who doe likewise keepe as apprentices twenty and three. 

One Ribbon weaver who keepeth v apprentices. 
. Two Hempdressers who keepe Tenn apprentices. 

Five Glovers who keepe Sixteene apprentices. 

One Linnen Weav (er) who keepeth iii jr apprentices. 


58 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 59 


and the Nottingham House of Correction had all training depart- 
ments of this kind in which many of the poor children of these towns 
were taught trades.’ 

The inmates of the English workhouses of the eighteenth century 
were chiefly decrepit old people and children too young to be ap- 
prenticed.® In order that the children might take part in the simple 
industrial activities carried on, and thus contribute to their support 
and ‘“‘be inured betimes to labor,”’ they were given a small amount of 
training in such occupations as carding, spinning, knitting, and 
stocking making. At various ages from eight to twelve they were 
commonly bound out as apprentices so that the public might be 
relieved entirely from the costs of their maintenance. Instruction 
other than that of a manual type was seldom given in the seventeenth 
century workhouses, but in the eighteenth century the children were 
usually taught to read and say the catechism, and less often, to 
write and ‘“‘cast accompts.”’ This instruction was given in some of 
the institutions when the children were very young before they were 
set to work, in others at the age when they were working. The school 
within the workhouse was in some cases supported out of the rates, 
in others by charitable gifts.’ 


One Carpenter who keepeth Two apprentices. 

The whole number of apprentices are cvi.”’ 

Manchester in 1615 made an arrangement with John Kirby whereby he agreed 
to ‘‘diligently teach, instructe and bringe upp all such youthes, children and 
other persons as shall be sent or committed into the said Howse of Correcon in 
some honest and true labour soe longe as they shall remayne there vnder his 
chardge’’ (Quoted by Leonard, p. 228). 

5Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 218. 

6Gray, History of English Philanthropy, p. 115. 

7An Account of Several Workhouses (London, 1732). This gives a detailed 
account of the operation of more than one hundred parish workhouses. Follow- 
ing is the regulation regarding the education of the children in the workhouse of 
St. Giles Parish: 

‘‘That there be a school in the House, where all children above three Years of 
Age, shall be kept till they be five years old, and then set to spinning, knitting, 
or to such other work as shall be thought proper for the Benefit of the Parish, and 
that the Master or Mistress who shall teach them to Work, or some other proper 
Person, shall likewise instruct each of them in Reading twice a Day, half an Hour 
each time, till they are nine years of Age; and then that the said Master or Mis- 
tress, or other proper Person, do teach them to write and cast Accompts two hours 
every Day, the better to qualify them for Apprenticeship or Services’’(p. 31). 

In the Parish of Stepney, 

‘The Children in this House areall young and helpless, and therefore aresent to 
a School in the neighborhood, at the publick charge, till they are 8 years of Age; 
and then they are bound out apprentices till the Age of 24” (p. 68). 

In a parish workhouse in Northamptonshire the working school was so success- 
fully conducted by a man and his wife that there were forty children besides 
sixty parish children in it (p. 151). 


60 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


The system of workhouses established by parishes in England had 
its beginning in local acts,’ but in 1722 Parliament passed a general 
law giving to all parishes, singly or in union, permission to establish 
them.® As a result a large number of institutions were organized, 
as many as one hundred parishes being reported in 1725 as having 
taken advantage of it in the three years succeeding its passage.}° 


PARISH WORKHOUSE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 


The problem of caring for the poor in Virginia was relatively 
simple, and it was not until the latter part of the colonial period, when 
there was an increase in the number of the poor, that there was any 
attempt to provide workhouses as a means of lowering public charges 
and reducing the number of vagabonds. The indigent were well 
taken care of in the homes of the inhabitants or aided in their own 
homes, and dependent children were bound out at an early age as 
servants or apprentices, thus relieving the parish from costs for their 
maintenance. The possibility of using workhouses as a means of 
trade education, however, was recognized by the authorities, and in 
the seventeenth century two attempts were made by the General 
Assembly to establish them with this object in view. The intention 
seems to have been to set up institutions something like the training 
department of the Christ’s Hospitals in England. 

The first workhouse law, passed in 1646, provided in some detail 
for the establishment of a ‘‘flax house’? at Jamestown to which 
children were to be sent from the different counties, there to be in- 
structed and employed ‘“‘in carding, knitting, and spinning, etc.. . 
under such master or mistresse as shall there be appointed.’”! Only 


8Webb, English Local Government, p. 1380. 


‘George I, cap. 7. “IV... and for the greater eace of parishes in the relief 
of the poor, be it further enacted by the authority of the aforesaid, That it shall 
and may be lawful for the churchwardens and overseers of the poor inany parish, 
town, township or place, in vestry or other parish or publick meeting for that 
purpose assembled . . . to purchase or hire any house or houses in the same 
parish, township, or place, and to contract with any person or persons for the 
lodging, keeping, maintaining and imploying any or all such poor in their re- 
spective parishes, townships, or places.’ 

Nicholls, History of the English Poor Law, Il, pp. 16-17. 

1Hening, I, p. 336. The law provided, 

“That the commissioners of the several counties respectively do, at their dis- 
cretion, make choice of two children in each county of the age of eight or seven 
years at the least, either male or female, which are to be sent up to James City 

between this and June next. . .And that the said children be furnished from the 
said county with six barrels of corne, two coverlets, or one rugg and one 
blanket: One bed, one wooden bowl or tray, two pewter spoons, a sow shote of 
six months old, two leying hens, with convenient apparel both linen and woolen.” 
The law then goes on to indicate the dimensions of the houses to be built. 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 61 


children of “‘such parents who by reason of their poverty are disabled 
to maintaine and educate them”’ were to be taken, but this provision 
was made probably because the authorities would not have been 
justified in forcibly taking others. There was no occasion at the 
time for establishing the institution as a means of caring for de- 
pendent children, since the system of apprenticeship readily effecte d 
this end. The purpose was educational and industrial, and the law 
was merely one of a series enacted from 1633 to 1696 in a rather 
unsuccessful endeavor to further the cultivation of flax and the 
manufacture of linen.” As one evidence of the lack of success. 
attending the efforts made, there is the statement of Governor 
Berkeley made in 1666 to the effect that he had incurred an expense 
of one thousand pounds in flax culture but had accomplished nothing 
Syit 

The statute of 1646 was repealed in 1661-62 without having been 
put into effect,'* its failure being evidenced by the lack of success in 
raising flax up to the time of its repeal, the lack of further legislative 
regulations dealing with its execution, the provision of a new plan in 
1668, and by the fact that no trace of it has been found in the records. 
We are not directly concerned with its operation, however, because 
it did not provide for any activity on the part of the parishes. 

In 1668 a statute was enacted with the same general intent as 
that in the earlier law, but in this provision was made for the es- 
tablishment of a number of county-parish institutions, wool and 
hemp in addition to flax are mentioned as commodities with which 
children were to work, and there was no requirement that action 
should be taken, the law merely giving permission. 


The detailed provision for the food and clothing of the children may be taken as 
evidence of the extreme care with which the project was planned, but it would 
have been more to the point to have effectively provided for the manufacture or 
importation of spinning wheels and the production of flax. 

2Hening, I, p. 218; II, 26, 121, 306; III, p. 81. 

Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, I, p. 398. 

14Hening, II p. 43. 

15‘*A n act impowering countie courts to build worke houses assisted by the vestrie 

WHEREAS the prudence of all states ought as much as in them lyes to en- 
deavor the propagation and encrease of all manufactures conducing to the neces- 
sityes of their subsistence, and God having blessed this country with a soyle 
capable of producing most things necessary for the use of men, if industriously 
improved, Ji is enacted by the grand assembly and the authority thereof, that for the 
better converting wool, flax, hempe, and other commodities into manufactures, 
and for the increase ofartificersin the country, that the commissioners of each 
county court, with the assistance of the respective vestries of the parishes in their 
counties, shall be and hereby are empowered to build houses for the educating 
and instructing poore children in the knowledge of spinning, weaving, and other 


62 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


Whether or not any meaning should be attached to the fact that 
wool is mentioned first in the list of commodities to be converted, it is 
certain that at the time of the passage of the law there was a special 
interest in the development of the woolen industry. In 1659 the 
exportation of wool was prohibited,! and in 1666 a law was passed 
requiring that ‘‘the commissioners of each county court shall provide 
and sett up a loom and weaver in each of the respective counties of 
this country, and at the charge of the covnty.’’!” The interference 
of the Dutch with the trade connections with England in 1667 
brought home to the Virginians the desirability of doing more than 
had been done in developing home manufacture of necessities such as 
woolen cloth.!8 The effort here was no more successful than in the 
case of linen. Beverley, writing in 1705, said, ‘‘Their sheep yield 
good Increase, and bear good Fleeces, but they shear them only to 
cool them.’’!9 

The Act of 1668 does not indicate what was to be the nature of the 
assistance to be given the courts by the vestries, but no doubt it was 
intended that they should have a part in the organization and con- 
duct of the institutions as well as in their support. In case a work 
school was established in any community the vestry records should 
show something of the action taken by the vestry. The evidence of 
the joint meetings of the court and vestry might appear only in the 
court record, but the vestry book should indicate something of what 
was done by the parish officials in determining the policy to be 
pursued in co-operation with the court, and in particular it should 
show the action taken by the vestrymen or wardens in making choice 
of poor children to be cared for and educated in the institutions. 
Votes showing the levy of parish taxes for the support of the work- 
house also should appear. Only four of the vestry books extant 
begin as early as 1668, but neither in these or in those covering the 
later period is there any suggestion that the county-parish work- 
schools were actually founded, and the probability is that the per- 
mission given the courts and vestries was not taken advantage of. 
The fact that those who have examined the county records have 


useful occupations and trades, and power granted to take poore children from 
indigent parents to place them to worke in those houses’? (Hening, II, 266). 
‘Henning, II, 488. 

WI bid., ‘p. 238. 

18Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, p. 256; Bruce, 
Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, I, p. 385. 

19Beverley, History of Virginia, p. 255. 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 63 


reported nothing showing their organization further substantiates 
this conclusion.”° 

There was no further legislative attempt made in Virginia to set 
up workhouses for the purpose of trade education, but in 1755 an 
Actin general like the English law of 1722 was passed providing. for 
them as a part of the scheme of poor relief. At the middle of the 
eighteenth century there was an increase in the number of poor 
people, particularly of the vagabond class, and it was with the 
purpose of furnishing a test of destitution and willingness to work, 
as well as of reducing the costs of poor support that the law was 
enacted. Following are the first two paragraphs of the law of 1755: 


I. WHEREAS the number of poor people hath of late years much increased 
throughout this colony, and it will be the most proper method for their main- 
tenance, and for the prevention of great mischiefs arising from such numbers of 
unemployed poor, to provide houses for their reception and employment, 

II. BE it enacted ... that it shall and may be lawful for the vestry of 
every parish in this colony to order and cause to be erected, purchased, or hired, 
one or more house or houses within their parish for the lodging, maintaininge, 
and employing of all such poor people as shall be upon the parish, or who shall 
desire relief from the vestry or church wardens; ... and to levy a reasonable 
allowance in their parish levies, for the education of such poor children as shall 
be placed in the said house, or houses, until they shall be bound out according to 
law.”! 


Other paragraphs of the law provided that the poor should not 
move from one parish to another to gain a settlement, that beggars 
should be sent to the workhouse, and that a person who asked alms 
should go to the workhouse if required.” 


20Bruce, in his Economic History of Virginia, I, p. 256, says in reference to the 
law of 1668, ‘‘This act must have been enforced, for in 1678 the justices of the 
peace of Lower Norfolk County were indicted by the Grand Jury for neglecting 
to observe it.’’ (Records of Lower Norfolk County, original volume, 1675-1686, p. 
40). Herefers to the fact that Lord Culpeper as Governor received instructions 
in 1679 to further the erection of workhouses, and suggests that those established 
in response to the law of 1668 may have fallen into disuse. There must have 
been some exceptional circumstance obligating the county court of Lower Nor- 
folk County, for the law, as shown in quotation above, was merely permissive, 
and the directions to Lord Culpeper may be properly considered as further evi- 
dence that nothing was done in effecting the intent of the law. 

*"1Hening, VI, p. 475. 

2The law of 1755 had its origin in a petition of the minister, wardens, and 
vestry of the Parish of Bruton in which there is reference to the increase in the 
number of vagabonds in the parish. The introductory paragraph of the law, 
given above, makes it appear that the conditions in Bruton Parish were general in 
the Colony. The prayer to the General Assembly set forth, ‘‘That the charge of 
providing for the Poor of the said Parish, hath always been burthensome to the 
Inhabitants thereof, and of late Years hath much increased, which they conceive 
is owing to the great number of idle Persons that resort to the City of Williams- 
burg (situate in the said Parish) in publick times, who lurk about the Town, and 


64 Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 


The statute went beyond the English law of 1722 in definitely 
allowing parish levies for education, but,as has been shown, in practice 
the English parishes often provided out of the rates for the instruction 
of the poor children in their workhouses. The educational pro- 
vision is of interest apart from its actual results for the reason that it 
represents the first legislative action taken by the colony allowing 
public taxation for education, and thus it may be considered the 
first step toward public activity in this field taken in Virginia. 

Judging from the existing vestry books, the first action in re- 
sponse to the law of 1755 was taken by Bristol Parish in Prince 
George County. In the record for the November meeting of that 
year appears the order, 

That the church wardens apply to the Vestrys of Martins Brandon and Bath 
parish to know if they will join with this parish towards building a workhouse, to 
keep the poor of the three parishes in, pursuant to an Act of the General Assembly.? 

No report from the wardens appears in the record, but in the 
meeting of November, 1756, it was ordered, ~ 

That Theodorick Bland apply to the Vestry of Brandon Parish to join this 
parish in building a workhouse for the poor of each parish.”4 

In a December meeting of the same year it was, 

Ordered that Stephen Dewey, Alexander Bolling, Theodorick Bland, William 
Eaton do meet the persons appointed by the vestries of Brandon and Bath 
Parishes to agree in settling the terms of the poore house.” 

The joint committee met, and in the vestry meeting of February 
23, 1757, the Bristol Parish members reported its conclusions. The 
report is of special interest, apart from the project it proposes, be- 
cause it presents the only description of the educational condition of 
poor children in Virginia in the eighteenth century which has been 
found. The report is as follows. 

It is the opinion of this Committee that a Convenient House ought to be 
Rented for Entertaining the poor of the said Parishes, if to be had, but if not, 
that then Land ought to be bought & Convenient Houses to be built for the joint 


use of the said Parishes in proportion to the Number of Tithables in each of the 
said Parishes. This Committee having taken under their most serious Con- 


Parts adjacent, till they gain a Settlement, and then become a charge to the 
Parish.” The parish officers then go on to ask permission to establish a work- 
house in the parish. Inresponsea bill was brought out which gave permission to 
all parishes as in the law finally enacted (Journals of the House of Burgesses, 
volume for 1752-1755, May 16, 1755, p. 260). 

*3Bristol Parish vestry book, p. 160. 

4Tbid., p. 164. 

*5Ibid., p. 164. 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 65 


sideration the unhappy and indeed miserable Circumstances of the many poor 
Orphans and other poor Children, Inhabitants of the said Parishes whose parents 
are utterly unable to give them any Education and being desirous to render the 
said House as Beneficial as possible & that such poor Children should be brought 
up in a Religious, Virtuous & Industrious Course of Life so as to become usefull 
members of the Community, Have Resolved earnestly to recommend it to their 
Respective Vestries that they should join in a Petition to the General Assembly 
to procure an Act to enable the said Parishes to erect a FREE ScHooL for 
educating the poor Children of the said Parishes in Reading, Writing and Arith- 
metic at the joint Expence of the said Parishes, and Uniting the same to the 
said Poorhouse Under such Rules, Orders and Directions as shall be most just 
and proper for perfecting so usefull and Charitable a Work, And in Order to 
facilitate the obtaining such Act to propose that the said Vestries should unite in 
opening Subscriptions that the Rich and Opulent & all other well disposed people 
may have an opportunity of Contributing towards so pious a design out of that 
SToRE which the FATHER of Bounties hath bestowed on them.?6 

In accordance with the proposal of the committee the four 
members from Bristol Parish were directed by the vestry, 
to Petition the General Assembly in conjunction with the Vestrys of Martins 
Brandon and Bath Parishes to obtain such Act as aforesaid. 

Neither the Journals of the House of Burgesses nor the Minutes of 
the Council record the reception of the proposed petition, and very 
possibly it was not presented for the reason that the other parish 
vestries did not favor the plan. The next reference to the project 
in the Bristol vestry minutes is in the record for 1774: 

Ordered that the Revd Mr. Harrison the C. Wardens Rob’t Bolling Docr 
Theok Bland, or any three of them, be appointed For the Parish of Bristol, to 
agree with the Vestry of Brandon Parish, in Order to Purchase a Place to Errect a 
Poor House for the use of Bristol and Brandon Parish’s.** 

This order taken in connection with the fact that there is no 
other reference to the workhouse shows that the plan was not carried 
out. 

While the law of 1755 contemplated merely the education of the 
few little children who might be cared for in each of the workhouses 
before the time of their apprenticeship, probably at the age of six or 
seven, the intention in the joint committee’s report apparently was to 
establish a kind of boarding school for improperly cared for children 
whether or not they were actually dependent. If the school was to 
serve the three parishes, the distribution of the population meant 
that the children would have to live in the institution, and this 
together with the provision for instruction in ‘“‘Reading, Writing, 


Bristol Parish vestry book, pp. 165-66. 
271Ibid., p. 244. 


66 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


and Arithmetic’’ without a reference to apprenticeship implied that 
the children to be taught might be from six to ten years of age or 
possibly older. There may have been an intention to make the 
institution a kind of working school like that established in Talbot 
County, Maryland, a few years previously, and largely with money 
raised in Virginia.22 There is no indication of it in the report, how- 
ever. It is clear that the idea was to go beyond what was allowed 
by the provisions of the law of 1755 for otherwise no special Act of the 
Assembly would have been required. Consideration of the state- 
ment in the report regarding the lack of educational provisions for 
the poor will be taken up later.?® 

The references in the vestry books to the establishment or opera- 
tion of workhouses in response to the law of 1755 are very few and 
brief, and they give no suggestion of educational activity except in 
the one case cited. In fact the institutions established seem to 
have been poorhouses without provision for employment such as in- 
tended by the law. The vestry records show that the following six 
parishes had workhouses or poorhouses at the dates indicated: 
Frederick Parish in Louisa County (1756), Petsworth Parish in 
Gloucester County (1760), Christ Church Parish in Lancaster 
County (1767), Augusta Parish in Augusta County (1767), Elizabeth 
City Parish in Elizabeth City County (1771), and Stratton Major 
Parish in King and Queen County (1772). 


28Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p.34; William and Mary College 
Quarterly, XII, p. 162. 

29The exceptional character of the proposition stated in the report of the 
joint committee raises the question as to whether it was an expression of a grow- 
ing community interest in the education of the poor. A possible explanation is 
found by relating what is recorded in the Bristol Parish vestry minutes to some 
of the circumstances connected with the passage of the law of 1755. The extracts 
from the vestry record which have been given suggest that Theodorick Bland, 
perhaps the leading man in the community at the time, may have been the 
person most interested in the establishment of the parish school and most re- 
sponsible for the action taken. The Journal of the House of Burgesses records 
that after the receipt of the petition from Bruton Parish, above referred to as 
being the occasion for the passage of the law of 1755, ‘‘a Bill for employing and 
better maintaining the Poor. . . .was read the first Time, and ordered read the 
second Time.’’ Four days later the bill was read the second time and given toa 
committee of which Mr. Bland, from Prince George County, was a member. 
This committee brought in an amendment which was accepted, although what the 
amendment was is not indicated. The fact that the main difference between the 
English statute of 1722 and the Virginia law of 1755 was in the educational pro- 
vision suggests that the amendment may have been the insertion of the educational 
clause. Mr. Bland’s membership on the committee of the Assembly and on the 
committee of the vestries which brought forward the educational project, to- 
gether with the fact that Bristol Parish was the first one to respond to the Act of 
1755, suggests that he may have been responsible for the proposal as it appears in 
the Bristol vestry minutes. 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 67 


While none of the parishes took advantage of the educational pro- 
visions of the law of 1755, there was one which established a poor- 
house upon the basis of a grant of property left by will after obtaining 
a special Act of the Assembly, and upon its own initiative provided 
for the teaching of poor children within it. In a will made 
in 1675 a certain William Cadowgan left to Upper Parish in Nanse- 
mond County land and stock the income from which was ‘“‘to be 
disposed of, by the churchwardens and vestry of the said parish, 
towards the maintenance of the poor, and other charitable uses.” 
In 1752 the Assembly allowed the vestry to sell the property as it 
then existed, and provided ‘“‘that the money arising by the sale of the 
said lands, and the said stock, shall be by them applied, for and 
towards erecting a house for the reception of the poor of the said 
parish.’’° In the vestry record for the meeting held November 4, 
1754, appears the following entry concerning the parish workhouse 
which was constructed: 


The house Built for the reception of the Poor of the Parrish Being now finished 
According to Agreement is Received by the Vestry And Persuant to the Act of 
the Assembly for that Purpose Made and provided . .. it is ordered that the 
Church wardens of this Parrish at Christmas next or some Convenient time soon 
after Convei into the Said house all the Poor persons that now is or hereafter 
shall be Maintained at the Parrish Expense there to be supported. . . .And it is 
firther ordered that Samuel Wallis then Be Admitted into the Said House as 
Overseer and Master and that he take Care of the Furniture and Provisions 
Which shall be provided for the said poor. And furthermore that he Teach 
eight poor Children which are to be sent into the Said House by the Church- 
wardens to Read Rite etc. For all which service The Said Samuel Wallis to 
have and Receive from this Parrish Annually the Sum of Twenty Pounds Current 
Money, His own Children Accommodated and Liberty To take in and School ten 
children besides the Poor Accordin as he Can Agree with there Parents, etc. 
During the time he shall be continued ... 


The record of the Upper Parish vestry meetings for the period 
following 1755 show that the poorhouse school was in operation until 
1759, when it was discontinued. In 1755 Wallis received his twenty 
pounds, but his salary for 1756 was reduced to ten pounds, as shown 
in the following order: 


That Samuel Wallis be Continued in the poorhouse the ensueing year at Ten 
pounds Current Money and that there is a woman as an assistant Imploy’d 
when occasion Require by the Church Wardens and that he have Liberty to take 
in and School Fifteen Children besides our Poor them not Exceeding Eight. 


The master was to be allowed to increase the number of pay 


0Hening, VI, 266, 518. 


68 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 


pupils as an inducement for him to continue to teach the parish 
children at the reduced salary. In the minutes for the meeting in 
June, 1756, appears the only record of a dependent child being 
placed in the poorhouse for schooling: “That the Daughter Margaret 
hall be put in the almshouse There to be School’d.”” In 1756 Wallis 
received his ten pounds ‘‘for keeping School, etc.,’’ and in 1757 and 
1758 he was paid as ‘“‘Teacher at ye poor house.’ In the record of 
January 1, 1759 the following entry appears: 

Whereas Mr. Samuel Wallice hath been Imployd some time past by the 
Vestry of this parish to take care of the poor house and to educate the poor 
children of the parish and it appearing that a sufficient Number of children can- 
not be got to be educated In the said house and that Continueing the said Mr. 
Wallice will be Running the Parish to expense without having the Desired Good 
efect it is therefore ordered that the Church wardens of this parrish Do account 
with and Discharge the said Mr. Wallice on the Seventeenth day of this Instant 
being the end of the year of his said service and that they employ some sober 
careful person to Look after the said House.*! 

In 1763 the parish was debtor ‘‘To Samuel Wallis for John Orans 
Schooling and Wood 2-8-2’’; in 1769 he was paid for “‘schooling some 
poor children” six pounds; and in 1770 “for schooling several poor 
children’’ he was paid 4£, 17s., 6p. 

The above extracts from the vestry records make it appear that 
there was not a sufficient number of dependent children in the parish 
to make it worth while to maintain the school in the workhouse. 
Poor parents probably preferred to keep their children at home 
rather than have them placed in the institution. It would seem as 
though poor children residing near the workhouse might have 
attended the school at the same time living in their homes. ‘There 
is, however, no suggestion of a desire on the part of the parents for 
such an arrangement or of a recognition on the part of the vestry 
that this plan might be followed. The fact that the master was 
allowed to teach private pay pupils in the school as partial com- 
pensation for his work indicates that the vestry did not think that 
association with the poorhouse would be looked upon by people in 
the community as objectionable, and the fact that the master was 
allowed to increase the number of pay pupils from ten to fifteen 
shows that he must have had a number of them in his school. In 
spite of the fact that the cost of educating parish children was pro- 
vided for entirely or in large part by a gift to the parish the plan did 
not succeed. As suggested, the reason seems to have been in the 


31Upper Parish, Nansemond County, MS. Vestry Minutes. 


Education in the Parish Workhouse 69 


lack of a keen interest on the part of the vestrymen, who could have 
made some adaptations, and in a lack of a strong desire on the part of 
the poorer people to have their children educated. In any case, the 
Upper Parish workhouse school, which was the only institution of the 
kind established in Virginia in the colonial period, failed under circum- 
stances which apparently were relatively favorable. 


CHAPTER V 
PARISH APPRENTICESHIP 


ENGLISH PRECEDENTS IN PARISH APPRENTICESHIP 


During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries poor law 
apprenticeship was used in England as the chief means of caring for 
dependent children and relieving the public from charges for their 
support.1 The indenture under which the children were bound was 
essentially the same as for industrial apprenticeship,? but the in- 
tention back of the law governing the practice was to provide main- 
tenance and oversight rather than education. 
ye meaning of ye statute was not for the education of boys in arts but for charity 
to keep ym and relieve ym from turning to roguery and idleness, so a man’s 
house was, as it were, a Hospital in yt case, rather than a shop of trade.’ 

Even though it had been intended to make regular trade edu- 
cation a part of the plan, the early age at which the children were 
apprenticed and the oversupply of labor would have interfered 
effectively with an attempt to require it of the masters. That 
the overseers of the poor were concerned primarily with relieving the 
parish from responsibility of support rather than with the provision 
of training or proper bringing up is shown by Dunlop‘ and by Burn 
in his History of the Poor Laws, written in 1764. Burn said that 
the overseers understood their duty to be, 


To maintain their poor as cheap as possibly they can at all events; .. .to 
bind out poor children apprentice no matter to whom or to what trade, but to 
take special care that the master live in another parish.§ 


The attitude of the poor law officials is shown by the fact that the 
larger share of the children were bound to husbandry and house- 


1Dunlop, English Apprenticeship and Child Labor, p. 248. 

2Poor Laws, or the Laws and Statutes relating to the Setiling, Maintenance, and 
Employment of the Poor (1727), p. 10. 

3Dunlop, p. 252. A court decision in the case of the gentry of Sheffield and 
its environs who tried to establish immunity from taking poor apprentices. 

4Dunlop, p. 256. 

5Burn, History of the Poor Laws, p. 211. 


70 


Parish Apprenticeship 71 


wifery with the understanding that they should serve as general 
help in return for their livelihood.® 

All persons were required to take poor apprentices ‘‘who by their 
profession or manner of living, have occasion to use servants.’ 
People of the better class in character and occupation objected to 
taking them, and they usually accepted them only because of the 
fine attached to refusal, even though a premium was paid and boys 
were bound until twenty-four. It was early decided that the justices 
had power to coerce those who refused: 
and if any such Master shall refuse to take such Apprentice (according to their 
Discretion) [that is the overseers’] so to him appointed, the said Justices may 
bind such Master over to the next General Gaol-delivery, there to answer his 
Default. And this was the Direction of Sir Henry Mountagne Knight, Chief 
Justice of the King’s Bench at Cambridge Assises, Anno Dom. 1618.8 

An act of Parliament passed in 1696 set at ten pounds the fine 
for refusal to take an apprentice.? Persons who were willing to 
accept parish children usually were not of a type to make satisfactory 
masters, and the system was characterized by much abuse of the 
children.!° William Bailey, writing in 1758, said, 

The present Method of putting out poor children apprentices, is very well 
known to be attended with great Inconveniences, as it lays an Incumbrance on 
Estates, and Families. Few of those poor children now serve out their Time, 
and many of them are driven, by Neglect or Cruelty, into such Immoralities as to 
frequently render them the objects of publick Justice. Many of those who take 
Parish apprentices are so inhuman, as to regard only the pecuniary Consideration, 
and having once received that, they, by ill Usage and Severity often drive the 
poor Creatures from them." 

some of the children no doubt were placed with masters who gave 
attention to their trade training,” but as a whole, English poor law 
apprenticeship should not be looked upon as having been an effective 
educational device and should hardly be considered to have been 
apprenticeship in the proper meaning of the word." Partly in 
recognition of the unfortunate conditions under which poor apprentices 
served and the careless manner of their bringing up, there was made 
in the eighteenth century workhouses and charity schools a more or 


6Dalton, Country Justice, p. 85. 

7Burn, Richard, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (1772), I, p. 68. 

8Dalton, Country Justice, p. 166. 

8 and 9 Wm. III, cap. 30. 

lPunlop, English Apprenticeship, pp. 256-59. 

UBailey, Wm., A Treatise on the Better Employment and More Comfortable 
Support of the Poor in Workhouses (1758), p. 5. 

Leonard, English Poor Relief, p. 226. 

%Dunlop, p. 249. 


72 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 
less successful attempt to instruct parish children in reading, writing, 
and the catechism before they reached the age to be bound out. 

The general statute under which pauper children were bound out in 
England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the Eliza- 
bethan poor law of 1601,'4 the apprenticeship provisions of which were 
not repealed until 1814. This made the parish churchwardens and 
the overseers of the poor the poor law officials, and gave to them the 
duty of apprenticing the children whose parents they might think not 
“fit or able to keep or maintain them.’ The law stipulated that they 
might raise ‘“competent sums of money”’ by parish levy for premiums 
to be paid the masters taking the children, and it required that in 
apprenticing a child they should secure the assent of two justices of 
the peace.& Thecustom seems to have been for the justices toregister 
their assent by use of the following form filled in and copied at the 
bottom of the indenture, although sometimes the statement of con- 
currence was incorporated in the indenture: 

We T. L. and M. T., two of his majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County 
Aforesaid, do hereby declare our Consent to the putting forth of the abovesaid 
L. M. Apprentice to the said J. K. according to the intent and meaning of the 
Indenture above written.! 

Probably in the ordinary course of events the action of the 
justices was purely formal, but in the many cases where legal questions 
arose in the administration of the law the justices took the respon- 
sibility. 

In summary, the English scheme of pauper apprenticeship with 
which the American colonists were familiar was not primarily an 
educational arrangement, but rather a system of compulsory support 
and guardianship of children administered under the supervision of 
the county justices by the parish poor law officers who had the 
right to use parish funds to partially compensate the masters. 


PARISH APPRENTICESHIP IN VIRGINIA 
The English system of compulsory apprenticeship was continued 


1443 Elizabeth, cap. 2. 

The granting of the power to levy taxes to provide for apprenticeship pre- 
miums which was first given in the law of 1601 may be considered to be the first 
step taken in England toward public support of education, but the general lack 
of an educational element in the scheme and the dominance of the poor support 
motive raise a question as to whether the taxation provided for should be con- 
sidered to have been educational taxation. Whether in fact it was the first step 
toward public support can best be determined by a study of the sequence of events 
in the later development. 

14% Poor Laws or The Laws & Statuies relating to the Settling, Maintenance & 
Embloyment of the Poor (1727), p. 11; Dalton, Country Justice, *p. 447. 


Parish Apprenticeship 73 


in Virginia but it was used in the colony as a means of education as 
wellasofsupport. The statutes distinguished three classes of children 
who were subject to forced apprenticeship: poor orphans,! children 
who were not being brought up properly because of the poverty,}® 
disordered lives, or carelessness of their parents,!® and illegitimate 
children.?° Before 1769 the law required that bastard children should 
be bound out as servants,”! but in that year they were put upon the 
same basis as other poor children and apprenticed under the same 
indenture.” It was assumed or directly stated in all of the apprentice- 
ship laws that training in a trade should be given, but the first 
prescription of instruction in reading and writing for children of any 
of the classes mentioned above was made in an enactment of 1705 
which dealt with the apprenticing of poor orphans.¥% Schooling 
was not required of masters of children apprenticed because of the 
poverty or neglect of their parents until 1727. 

In the various statutes dealing with forced apprenticeship there 
are four objects indicated: the improvement of industry by the 
training of skilled workers,** the reduction of the amount of poverty 
and vagabondage,” the better bringing up of otherwise uncared for 
children,”° and relief from public responsibility for support.?? Con- 


7Hening, I, 416 (1656). The laws referred to here were not the only ones 
making the distinctions between the classes of children. The statute of 1656 
provided that orphans were to be bound to a manual trade “‘if the estate will not 
reach to a free education.”’ 

18Hening, I, 336 (1646); II, 298 (1672). 

Hening, IV, 212 (1727); VI, 32 (1748). It was not until the passage of the 
law of 1748 that proper bringing up specifically included due care of the education 
of children. The law of 1727 was as follows: ‘‘That if it should happen, that the 
parent or parents of any child or children, upon due proof before the court of the 
county wherein such parent or parents inhabit, shall be adjudged incapable of 
supporting and bringing up such child or children, by reason of his, her, or their 
idle, dissolute, and disorderly course of life, or that they neglect to take due care of 
the education and instruction of such child or children, in christian principles, that 
then it shall and may be lawful upon certificate from the said court, to and for the 
churchwardens of the said parish, where such child or children shall inhabit to 
bind out, or put to service or apprentice, such child or children, for such time or 
term, and under such covenants, as hath been usual and customary, or the law 
directs in the case of orphan children.’’ 

20Hening, I, 4388 (1662); III, 87 (1691). Mulattoes were also distinguished, 
but they may be considered as illegitimates. 

41Hening, III, 87. 

2Hening, VIII, 374-77 (1769). 

*%Hening, III, 375 (1705): ‘‘And the master of every such orphan shall be 
obliged to teach him to read and write.” 

*4Hening, I, 336 (1646); IV, 482 (1736). 

*Hening, II, 298 (1672), An ‘‘Act for Suppressing vagabonds and disposeing of 
poore children to trades.’’ 

*Hening, IV, 212 (1727). 

7Hening, III, 375 (1705): ‘‘And if the estate of any orphan be of so small a 


74 Parish Education 1n Colonial Virginia 


sidering the laws as a whole it cannot be said that any one of the 
objects sought was dominant in the minds of the legislators. It 
seems, however, that as time went on there was an increasing interest 
in the welfare of the children concerned. This is suggested by the 
addition of educational requirements and the placing of illegitimates 
on the same basis as other children. 

The duty of apprenticing poor orphans was in law in the hands of 
the county justices,?* while the binding out of bastards as servants or 
apprentices was given to the parish wardens.?* The apprenticing of 
children of poor or careless parents was assigned to the justices until 
a law of 1727 delegated the work to the wardens acting “upon certifi- 
cate’ from the county court.8° Eefore 1727, however, the wardens 
participated in the work of apprenticing children of parents not able 
to bring them up by submitting to the courts the names of children 
subject to the law.*! \ Since we are primarily concerned with parish 
activity in education we should note that after 1727 the wardens had 
the larger share of the responsibility for carrying out the laws of com- 
pulsory apprenticeship, although the binding ‘out of orphans and the 
general supervision of the system was left to the county courts.” 
The certification provided for in the law of 1727 corresponded to the 
“assent”’ prescribed in the English law of 1601, although it was not 
the custom as in England to register the consent in the indenture. 
Probably it was the practice when the court was a party to the pro- 
cedure for the wardens to take the names of children and proposed 
masters to the justices, who then approved the proposed disposition 
of the children by an order. In view of this a record showing children 
bound out by the wardens “‘upon order of the court’’ does not mean 
that the justices initiated the proceeding or had more than a formal 
part in binding out the children. 

The scheme of forced apprenticeship which is outlined in the 
statutes of colonial Virginia is in brief as follows. In general all 
children whose education was not properly provided for by parents 


value, that no person will maintain him for the profits thereof. LekCoal a 
statute of 1769 which was concerned with the apprenticing of emit children, 
there is complaint that the laws were insufficient for indemnifying parishes 
“from the great charges Set oF arising from children begotten out of lawful 
matrimony’’ (Hening, VII, 

aetiening 1, i298: 

*9Hening, III, 87 (1691); VIII, 374. 
 *°Hening, IV, 12. 

31Hening, II, 298 (1672). 
Baa eLening AV, 452 (1748). There were earlier laws which had the same general 
import. 


Parish Apprenticeship | 78 


or guardians were to be apprenticed. At first only trade training was 
required of masters but in the first part of the eighteenth century 
instruction in reading and writing also came to be required, except for 
girls. In the seventeenth century the execution of the laws was in 
the hands of the county court, and the court continued to have 
responsibility for apprenticing orphans. Early in the eighteenth 
century the parish wardens were given the duty of binding out all 
except poor orphans, although according to law the court shared in 
the work by giving an order or certificate to the wardens in the case 
of each child apprenticed. If the law had been strictly followed the 
study of parish activity in apprenticeship would be limited to an 
examination of the work of the wardens acting in conjunction with 
the court in binding out children other than orphans in the period 
after 1727, in which year the duty of apprenticing children was first 
given them. It will be shown, however, that the law was not closely 
followed. 

The vestries never had a duty with regard to apprenticeship as- 
signed to them by statute, and yet the vestry books show that in the 
period which they cover it was a common practice for them to bind 
out poor children of the three types distinguished in law, including, 
occasionally, orphans with property. The assumption by the 
vestries of the charge of binding out dependent children naturally 
proceeded from their having general charge of the care of the poor, 
and from the fact that the wardens were appointed by them from 
among their own number and were responsible to them. In the 
vestry meetings the cases of persons partially or entirely dependent 
upon the parish for support, or likely to become so, were brought up 
for action, and in the cases of poor children, whether orphans or not, 
there were the alternatives of providing support or binding them out. 
There are many illustrations in the vestry books showing how in the 
natural course of events the apprenticing of poor children fell into 
the vestry’s hands. Following are typical cases: 


Ordered that the Child Widow Bass now hath nursing for ye parish be bound 
out by indenture to ye aforesaid widdow Bass by the Churchwardens (Bristol 
Parish, 1720). 

Whereas George Peirson ye son of George Peirson decd has bin from time past 
a burden to ye parish Henry Bray prefering to ease ye parish and the said child 
off (from being any charge for the future) Order is by this present vestry that the 
Church wardens bind him out to Henry Bray with pd come to the age of one and 
twenty years (Petsworth Parish, 1692). 


Upon the petition of Eliz. Glidewell that she is a poor widow and not able to 


76 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


take care of her children desires that her son Robt. Glidewell be bound to Tho 
Clemmon as the law directs Tis granted (Bristol Parish, 1729). 


Ordered that Francis, Agnes, Thomas, and Averillah, children of Mary 
Gerrard, Widdow, be bound out by the church wardens (St. Paul’s Parish, 1736). 


To Mrs. Abagail Richardson, for Mary and susanna Jeffs, children of Sarah 
Jeffs, in full for the Time she hath kept them, and to indemnify the Parish from all 
charges for keeping and bringing them up the said children for the time to come, 
they being now bound apprentices to her (Henrico, 1771). 

That the vestry commonly assumed responsibility for the binding 
out of poor children is indicated in Hugh Jones’ Present State of 
Virginia, written in 1722: 

For where there is a numerous Family of Poor Children the Vestry takes care 
to bind them out Apprentices, till they are able to maintain themselves by their 
own labor.* 

Whenever the wardens bound out a child upon vestry order, the 
indenture was probably given to the vestry clerk for preservation along 
with other official papers. If the clerk was especially careful, or if 
the vestry required it of him, he copied the indenture into the perma- 
nent record, but the indenture was a relatively lengthy, formal 
paper, and as long as the original was kept there was no real necessity 
of copying it. After the expiration of the term of service to which 
the child was bound there was no good reason for keeping the original, 
and so we have the contracts kept only in those cases where a copy 
was made. In the Petsworth Parish vestry book there are evidences 
showing that the vestry was unusually conscientious in its work, 
and here we find that the indenture was ordinarily recorded in the 
body of the vestry record following the order for apprenticing a 
child. In Fredericksville Parish in Louisa County the vestry re- 
quired the clerk to record the indentures of children they ordered to 
be apprenticed in a special book devoted to the purpose, but they 
paid him for his work, as for instance in 1770: ‘“‘Dr. to ditto [the 
clerk] for recording four indentures—120 [pounds of tobacco].”’ 
It is only in the case of Fredericksville Parish that we have an ap- 
parently complete record for a considerable period of years of in- 
dentures binding out children whose apprenticeship was ordered by 
the vestry, but for the reasons which have been indicated little 
significance should be attached to the lack of similar records in other 
parishes. 

Where it was customary after 1727 for the wardens to apprentice 
children “‘upon certificate’ from the county court instead of upon 


3Jones Hugh, Present State of Virginia, p. 54. 


Parish Apprenticeship fis 


order of the vestry, the probability is that they gave the indenture to 
the vestry clerk just as they did where the work was done under 
direction from the vestry. In this case, however, after the disposal 
of the original indenture at the end of the period of service no evi- 
dence would remain except where it was the practice to make a copy 
for preservation. And since the binding out was not ordered by the 
vestry, the clerk would seldom record it as a part of the official vestry 
business. It is possible that in such case it was the more or less 
common practice for the clerk to record the indenture in a special 
book, although none has been found. In one parish, however, it 
was the consistent policy for the clerk to copy in the back of the 
vestry book the indentures of children apprenticed upon order of the 
court. This was in Dettingen Parish in Prince William County. 

The chief problem in the study of compulsory apprenticeship is 
the determination of the number of children who were provided for in 
the system. It will make the solution of this problem simpler if at 
first attention be confined to the period after 1727 in which, for the 
reasons above indicated, we may assume that the actual indenturing 
of poor children was done by the wardens either upon vestry or court 
order. For this period there is an adequate number of vestry books 
upon which to base conclusions, whereas there is not for the earlier 
time. If a correct judgment as to numbers is made for the last 
fifty years of the colonial period, we may make a sufficiently trust- 
worthy inference for the time preceding. 

Following is a list of the parishes whose vestry books have been 
examined, with the number of cases of apprenticeship recorded in 
each case in the period from 1726 to 1776 or for a period within these 
limits for which we have what is apparently a complete record. 


Parish Period Cases Average Yearly 
Number 
Albemarle, Sussex 1741-1776 0 — 
Antrim, Halifax 1752-1770 0 —_ 
Blissland, New Kent 1726-1776 
Bristol, Prince George 1726-1749 32 1.45 
Christ Church, Lancaster 1739-1776 0 — 
Christ Church, Middlesex 1726-1776 0 — 
Cumberland, Lunenburg 1747-1776 0 — 
Dettingen, Pr. William 1751-1776 67 2.6 
Elizabeth City, Elizabeth City 1751-1776 2 08 
Frederick, Frederick 1764-1776 0 — 
Fredericksville, Louisa 1742-1776 61 1.8 
Henrico, Henrico 1730-1773 3 .05 


78 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


King William, Henrico 1727-1750 0 — 
Kingston, Mathews 1727-1776 1 —_ 
Linhaven, Lower Norfolk 1727-1776 0 — 
Petsworth, Gloucester 1727-1776 24 48 
St. George, Spotsylvania 1727-1776 0 — 
St. James, Goochland 1744-1776 1 — 
St, Mark’s, Culpeper 1730-1776 2 — 
St. Patrick’s, Prince Edward 1755-1774 0 — 
St. Paul’s, Hanover 1727-1738 16 1.3 
St. Peter’s, New Kent 1727-1759 3 — 
Shelbourne, Loudon 1771-1776 0 — 
Stratton Major, King and Queen 1729-1776 16 4 
Truro, Fairfax 1737-1740 11 Bie 
Upper Parish, Nansemond 1744-1776 0 — 
Wicomico, Westmoreland 1727-1776 0 _— 


If it should be assumed that for the parishes and the periods 
indicated we have a complete record of all the children apprenticed 
by the wardens either upon court or vestry order, the conclusion 
would be that an altogether inconsiderable number of poor children 
were apprenticed. But the wide differences between the parishes, 
in some cases between those in adjoining counties, make it certain 
that the record for some is incomplete. In some cases where there is 
no evidence of apprenticeship it is likely that the wardens apprenticed 
children without vestry intervention, and that the indentures were 
not preserved or recorded. In view of these considerations, attention 
may be limited to several of the parishes in which the largest number 
of children were bound out and for which the record for a considerable 
period seems complete. Even in these cases conclusions can be 
only approximately correct. 

The Bristol Parish vestry book covers the period from 1720 to 
1789. In 1720 the vestry ordered the apprenticing of two orphans 
and the binding out to service of one illegitimate child. In most of 
the years following down to 1748 similar action was taken. In 1748 
two bastard children were bound to apprenticeship ‘“‘by an order of 
the court of Prince George County,’ and in 1749 it was ordered 
“That the church wardens petition the court to bind out Ann the 
daughter of Robert Hudson.’ In these two years no other cases are 
recorded, and in the years following there is no further reference to 
apprenticeship. Why the court should have desired to take over the 
work of ordering the apprenticing of poor children after it had been 
for several decades in the hands of the vestry is difficult to see, but 
it is apparently because the court took the duty that there is no 


Parish Apprenticeship 79 


further reference to apprenticeship in the parish records. The 
Prince George County order books for the period are destroyed so that 
it is impossible to determine any of the facts in the matter by means 
of them. Whatever may have been the cause of the change of policy, 
the important question from the standpoint of an attempt to de- 
termine the number of children apprenticed in the parish is as to 
whether the vestry in the period from 1727 to 1749 took practically 
the sole responsibility in ordering the binding out of poor motherless 
or fatherless children, the children of poor or negligent parents, and 
illegitimates, or whether there was a division of the work with the 
court ordering the binding out of children of the same types. 

The Bristol vestry record suggests that from 1720 to 1748 the 
vestry was the recognized authority in the parish for the indenturing 
of poor children of all classes, and that practically all who were pro- 
vided for by this means were bound out by the vestry. The following 
typical cases from the vestry book serve as evidence. 


Mr. Theo. Bott haveing an orphant boy bound to him by his mother desires 
the same may be confirmed by this vestry (1720). 

Upon the petition of Eliz. Lett It is ordered that James Lett her son now 
being at Tho. Gregories be by the Church wardens bound unto Daniell nance and 
his wife untill the said James come to lawful age (1722). 

Upon the motion of Daniel Jackson That John Pucket is run away and left 
one of his children by name Eliz. pucket prayes that ye said child be bound to 
him and his heirs as the law directs. Tis granted (1728). 

Upon the petition of Eliz. Glidewell that she is a poor widow and not able to 
take care of her children desires that her son Robt. Glidewell be bound to Tho. 
Clemon as the law directs Tis granted (1729). 

Ordered that Willm Bleik (alias Pride) be bound to Willm Pride supposed to 
be his father (1731). 

Ordered that the children of William Stow dec’d be bound out by the vestry 
as the law directs (17381). 

Ordered that Mary Blys Child be bound to Peter Gill born the 17th Feb. 
1729 Named Joshua Irby (1731). 

Ordered that Henry Voden assigne Eliz. Brown an orphan girl over to Wm. 
Pirkason (17385). 

William Eppes and Theodorick Bland Churchwardens of the parish put In- 
stance Hall (son of John Hall deceased) an apprentice to Wm. Sturdivant as the 
law directs to learn the trade of shoemaking (1747-8). 


The variety of cases, the apprenticing of orphans, the continuous 
record, the petitions to the vestry, and the lack of reference to the 
justices as officials binding out children point to the conclusion that 
in the period from 1720 to 1748 the vestry was the body which took the 


80 Parish Education in Colontal Virginia 


responsibility for ordering the apprenticing of poor children in the 
parish. 

Limiting attention to the period from 1727 to 1748, we find that 
thirty-two children, or an average of about 1.5 each year, were ap- 
prenticed in Bristol Parish.4 The significance of this number, how- 
ever, can only be seen by comparing it with the total number of 
white children in the parish who were of proper age to be apprenticed, 
and this number cannot be determined accurately. The facts as 
they existed in 1740 may be approximated and taken as typical for 
the period. The white children born in Bristol Parish in 1740, 
1741, and 1742 numbered 51, 81, and 76 respectively. If sixty 
births each year be taken as normal for some years preceding 1740, 
and if it be assumed that ten per cent of all children born in the parish 
died, there were in 1740 somewhat over five hundred white children 
in the parish who were more than three years old and less than 
fourteen.*® At the same time there were, on the basis 1.5 as the 
average number apprenticed each year, perhaps fifteen children, or 
three per cent of all, who had been apprenticed under the poor law. 
In view of the fact that there were relatively many poor people in the 
colony at the time,*” we should be justified in concluding that among 


34In this period there were also twenty illegitimate children, mainly mulattoes, 
‘“‘bound to serve as the law directs.’’ At this time the law directed that bastards 
should be bound to service. 

%5Bristol Parish Register. Bristol Parish is taken for detailed study because the 
vestry book and register have been published, allowing more careful examination 
than can readily be made in the case of other parishes. The number of births was 
somewhat greater than that indicated above for the register of names beginning 
with D, E, and F is missing for the years preceding 1745, and probably some births 
in lower class families were not registered. Of 100 illegitimate children which 
are shown by the register, the record of fines, or the record of apprenticeship to 
have been born in Bristol Parish between 1719 and 1770 only 51 have their births 
recorded in the register. 

36[n industrial apprenticeship the age for binding out children was thirteen or 
fourteen, but in the system of poor law apprenticeship in Virginia children were 
usually bound out at an earlier age, often as infants. 

37No adequate study of the number of poor people in colonial Virginia has been 
made, but it is clear that there were many of them. Theratio between the number 
of dependent poor receiving public aid and the number of tithables was, ac- 
cording to a rough estimate based on the vestry records, 20 to 1200. This takes 
no account of the vagabond class or of the poor who got along without parish aid. 
While the statutes of the colony are not by themselves a safe basis for judgments 
as to actual facts of any sort, the following extracts from the laws are a kind of 
proof that there were many poor. 

_ A law of 1672 (Hening, II, 298) stated that the neglect of certain English 
statutes “hath encouraged and much encreased the number of vagabonds idle 
and dissolute persons.’’ In an act of 1727 (Hening, IV, 208) there is complaint 
that idle and disorderly persons able to work ‘“‘strole from one county to an- 
other, neglecting to labor,” and that vagabonds “‘run from their habitations and 


Parish Apprenticeship 81 


the ninety-seven per cent not apprenticed there were a great many 
poor children who were not receiving an education either of a trade 
or school type. That this conclusion is correct is shown in a de- 
scription of conditions as they existed in the parish a few years later. 

In 1755 a committee composed of members of the vestries of the 
neighboring parishes of Bristol, Martins Brandon, and Bath made a 
report to their respective vestries concerning a proposal to establish 
a school in connection with a workhouse.** The plan was proposed 
by the Bristol Parish representatives, of whom Theodorick Bland, 
the leading man in the community, was one. The part of the report 
which is descriptive of conditions is as follows: 


This committee having taken under their most consideration the unhappy 
and indeed miserable circumstances of the many poor orphans and other poor 
children, inhabitants of the said parishes, whose parents are utterly unable to 
give them any education and being desirous. . .that such poor children should be 
brought up in a religious, virtuous and industrious course of life, have resolved 
earnestly to recommend it to their respective vestries that they should join in a 
petition to the general Assembly. . .(Bristol Parish vestry book, pp. 165-66) 


The above description of the situation is very significant not only 
as an indication of the bad condition educationally of the large 
number of children not apprenticed, but also as in effect a recognition 
of the inefficacy of poor apprenticeship as an educational means.%® 
The law definitely provided that ‘‘the many poor orphans and other 
poor children’? mentioned should be apprenticed, properly brought 
up by masters, and given instruction in a trade and in reading and 
writing.*° If it had been the consistent policy for the masters of 


leave either wives or children without suitable means of support.’’ The following 
is an introductory paragraph in an enactmnet of 1755 (Hening VI, 475). 

“WHEREAS the number of poor people hath of late years much increased 
throughout this colony . .. andit willbethemost proper method for their main- 
tenance, and for the prevention of great mischiefs arising from such numbers of 
unemployed poor. to provide houses for their reception and employment, . . .”’ 

88See above, p. 

s9While no other contemporary description of the condition of poor children 
in Virginia has been found, there is a similar statement with reference to Mary- 
land where there were corresponding poor apprenticeship Jaws and somewhat the 
same social conditions. There is a certain amount of confirmation of the con- 
clusions reached with respect to Virginia in this statement. Rev. Thomas 
Bacon, who at the middle of the 18th century undertook the establishment of a 
charity work school in Talbot County, Maryland, preached a sermon in London 
in the endeavor to get contributions to help in carrying out the project. He 
said in the sermon, 

“God only knows, the great necessity of such a work in this province, where 
education is hardly to be attained at any rate by the children of the poor, much 
greater than can be apprehended from the general complaint, or even discovered 
by the particular inquiry of such as are put upon it by the duties of their station.’ 
(Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p. 34 

40Hening, IV, 208; V, 451. 


82 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


children apprenticed to follow the law either voluntarily or because of 
the oversight of the court which the law provided for, there would 
have been no reason for the complaint in the report or for an attempt 
to put a new plan into operation. If the disobedience had been 
merely a temporary lapse and if the system of apprenticeship had 
not been under the conditions inherently unsatisfactory as an edu- 
cational means, the members of the vestry, who were the most in- 
fluential men in the community, could readily have brought about a 
reform. Mr. Bland, for instance, was a member of the vestry, clerk 
of the county court, and a member of the House of Burgesses. 

It may be stated here that while it would be possible to give too 
great significance to the statement in the Bristol Parish vestry book 
as an indication of the educational conditions with respect to the 
poor in Virginia in the eighteenth century, it is certainly the best 
evidence bearing on the subject. It shows the working of the scheme 
of apprenticeship rather than the theory as expressed in the law or as 
it may be inferred from the study of individual cases of children 
bound out. It also shows the futility of an ‘attempt to attach im- 
portance to the detailed provisions and minor amendments of the 
law. 

How is the state of affairs described by the committee on the 
workhouse school to be related to the fact that it was the consistent 
policy of the Bristol Parish vestry over a long period to apprentice 
one or two children each year? The probability is that the authorities 
confined their attention to the cases of children who were dependent 
onthe public for support or were likely to become so, and that 
ordinarily other children of the poor were not apprenticed. 

In Dettingen Parish sixty-seven children, or an average of two or 
three each year, were apprenticed between 1751 and 1776. The 
record of apprenticeship in this parish is in the form of indentures made 
by the wardens ‘“‘upon order of the county court’’ and copied in the 
back of the vestry book. The activity of the vestry was confined to 
ordering the binding to service of nine illegitimate children in the 
period from 1745 to 1753. After 1753 the court seems to have taken 
entire charge of the binding out of children both to service and to 
apprenticeship. The indentures made out before 1765 were not 
recorded in the year in which they were drawn up, but were copied 
mixed in order of time—1764, 1751, 1760, 1752, etc. Apparently it 
was the custom before 1763 for the clerk to keep the original in- 
dentures along with other parish papers, but in that year the clerk 


le 


Parish Apprenticeship 83 


was required to copy them, and ordinarily thereafter the order of 
time was followed. The fact that all the apprenticing was done 
upon order of the court, that all classes of poor children were bound 
out by the wardens upon court order, and that there are enough 
cases over a long period to show a consistent policy makes it reason- 
ably certain that we have in the record an account of all poor children 
who were apprenticed under the poor law in the parish. 

The total number of recorded cases of apprenticeship in Dettingen 
Parish is larger than for any other parish, the average of 2.6 per year 
is greater than for any other, except for Truro Parish for a short 
time; and considering the number of tithables, of whom there were 
1287 in 1760,*! the relative number of children apprenticed was more 
than twice that in Bristol Parish. One explanation of this fact is 
that there were relatively many poor people and young orphans in 
the parish.*2 Another explanation is that Dumfries, which was in 
Dettingen Parish, was during the latter part of the colonial period an 
important center of trade so that the possibilities of apprenticeship 
were more readily realized than in most of the other parishes. Bishop 
Meade says that Dumfries was “‘once the mart of that part of Vir- 
ginia, ... the abode of wealthy merchants from Scotland.’’® 
However, the number of poor children apprenticed, considering the 
number of poor people in the parish, is not much if any greater than 
would be called for by the rule that dependents should be bound out. 

In Fredericksville Parish sixty-one children were apprenticed in 
the period from 1742 to 1776, an average of 1.8 per year. The case 
of this parish is similar to that of Dettingen in that there was a 
relatively large number of children bound out and that the record was 
in the form of indentures, but the apprenticing here was done by the 
wardens upon vestry order instead of upon court order. Children 
other than those for whom we have record may have been ap- 
prenticed by court order, but the evidence indicating that the work 
was done by the vestry is of the same type as in Bristol Parish. 

The Truro Parish vestry book has no record of apprenticeship 
except for the years 1737 to 1740, and here it is in the form of in- 
dentures copied in with the vestry minutes. No doubt parish 
children were bound out before and after these dates and we may 
assume that there was not much variation from 2.7 each year which 


4M{S. Vestry Book, 1760. 
“Ror instance, see page 77 in the parish vestry book. 
Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, II, 209. 


84 Parish Education tn Colonial Virginia 


was the average number apprenticed in the period from 1737 to 
to 1740. This leads to the same conclusion as that reached in the 
consideration of the other parishes—that dependent children were 
bound out. 

In the case of Petsworth Parish the record shows that the vestry 
apprenticed children of all types distinguished in law, and that they 
exercised an unusual interest in the children, sometimes paying 
premiums and as early as 1700 requiring of the master three years 
schooling.“* It is impossible to determine whether the vestry 
ordered the apprenticing of all poor children who were bound out in 
the parish, but there are the following indications that they did. 
The vestry regularly ordered the apprenticeship of poor orphans, 
which in law was a duty of the court, and they occasionally bound out 
orphans with property; they demanded three years of schooling 
before the law required it; they sometimes paid premiums to masters 
for taking children; and the record shows a continuous policy. The 
premium in cases of children without property was paid by the parish 
as the institution responsible for the care of the poor, and it is un- 
likely that the court would order the apprenticing of children when 
the payment of the premivm was customary—thus requiring the 
vestry to make an outlay of parish money. In Petsworth Parish 
the educational motive is more apparent than in any other parish, 
but the relatively small number of cases, an average of .48 per year, 
shows that this purpose was not strong enough to make the vestry 
look upon apprenticeship as a means of giving education to any 
large share of the poor children of the parish. The motive which 
was probably the fundamental one in this parish as in the others is 
suggested by a record made in 1721. The wardens were required to 
bind out an illegitimate child ‘‘as soon as possible they can gitt any- 
body to take it off them.’’” 

Except in the cases of the parishes which have been considered 
above, the extant records, in each case covering part or all of the 
period from 1727 to 1776, show few or no cases of apprenticeship. 
But it is reasonable to assume that because of the desire to relieve 
the public from charges for support the policy of binding out the 
dependent children was generally followed. The lack of records in 
some parishes may mean that the wardens acted upon their own 


4’4The court record of Gloucester County in which Petsworth Parish was lo- 
cated has been destroyed. 
45Petsworth Parish MS. Vestry Book, p. 109. 


Parish Apprenticeship 85 


initiative, that is without vestry order, and that the indentures were 
not kept after the expiration of the terms of service. In other parishes 
the practice was probably like that in Dettingen where the court 
took charge of certificating the binding out of dependent children. 
It may be that here the original indentures were not preserved and 
that if books for recording the contracts were used they were lost 
after the end of the colonial period. We may be sure, however, that 
the more seriously apprenticeship was considered in any parish and 
the larger the number of cases the greater the probability that a 
parish record of orders or indentures was kept and the greater the 
likelihood that some evidence would be preserved to the present, 
whether the wardens acted independently or upon vestry or court 
order. If we were considering the period before 1727, in which year 
the wardens were made by law the agents for apprenticing poor 
children other than orphans, we might explain the lack of evidence of 
poor apprenticeship in the parish records in some cases, and the small 
number taking all into consideration, by assuming that the work was 
done almost entirely by the county courts; but in view of the facts 
which have been brought out this does not serve as an explanation 
after 1727. It may be assumed that the county courts in the period 
after 1727, as well as before, followed the law fairly closely and 
apprenticed dependent orphans, although the assumption of some of 
the work by the vestries and the statement in the Bristol Parish 
vestry book to the effect that ‘“‘many poor orphans’’ were not bound 
out make it seem doubtful. 

Heretofore attention has been confined mainly to the period 
after 1727. With regard to the earlier period, in which the courts 
were legally responsible for apprenticing all classes of poor children 
except illegitimates, it may be said that there is little reason for 
thinking that a larger share of poor children were bound out than in 
the later period, and the probability is that, considering the growth of 
enlightenment and the improvement in the conditions of living, the 
relative number apprenticed was greater in the latter part of the 
colonial period than in the earlier. It may be, however, that the 
inadequacy of the system became more apparent as time went on.“ 

The conclusion that ordinarily only the children who were de- 
pendents were bound out in compulsory apprenticeship means that 
the laws providing for neglected children of poor parents were not 


46For a discussion of apprenticeship in the seventeenth century see Bruce, 
Institutional History of Virginia, I, 311-14. 


86 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


generally enforced. This calls for an explanation. In the first 
place it should be understood that the laws of colonial Virginia are 
not to be depended upon as indications of actual practices. Many 
laws seem to have been enacted as an expression of desire on the part 
of the legislators without proper consideration being given to custom 
or to conditions under which they were to be carried out. There are 
many illustrations of the futility of legislation. In Chapter IV it 
has been shown that the laws dealing with workhouses and the im- 
provement of the woolen industry were of little or no effect. As 
another illustration we have the laws dealing with minor morals and 
religious observances.” The fact that the laws which provided 
most adequately for the education in apprenticeship of the children 
of poor or neglectful parents, that is those of 1727 and 1748, merely 
gave power to the wardens and courts without requiring them to act, 
is a partial explanation of their lack of effect. 

However serious were the intentions of the legislators, there were 
several factors in the situation which effectively interfered with 
the execution of the laws. As has been shown, a chief motive in 
enacting the statutes of apprenticeship was the desire to add to the 
number of skilled workers and thus in a measure raise industry from 
its low state. But the elements in the situation making the condition 
of manufactures unsatisfactory also interfered with the development 
of apprenticeship, and no doubt made parents and the local authorities 
look upon it with disfavor as a means of education. The following 
description of industrial conditions and practices at the middle of 
the colonial period shows how the development of an artisan class 
was discouraged and indicates that those who were directly con- 
cerned with apprenticeship could not have thought of it as offering 
much advantage to those subject to the law. 


For want of Towns, Markets, and Money, there is but little Encouragement 
for Tradesmen and Artificers, and therefore little Choice of them, and their 
Labour very dear in the country. Then a great deal of Tradesman’s Time being 
necessarily spent in going and coming to and from his Work, in dispers’d County 
Plantations, and his Pay being generally in straggling Parcels of Tobacco, the 
Collection whereof costs about 10 per cent, and the best of this Pay coming but 
once a Year, so that he cannot turn his Hand frequently with a small stock, as 
Tradesmen do in England and elsewhere, all this occasions the Dearth of all 


47Tt is possible to show in a number of ways the common non-observance of 
some of the laws dealing with morals. For evidence in the laws themselves see 
Hening, III,168; III, 205; IV, 244. 


Parish Apprenticeship 87 


Tradesmen’s Labour, and likewise the Discouragement, Scarcity, and Insufficiency 
of Tradesmen.*§ 

There was complaint in an apprentice law of 1646 that poor 
parents for the most part were “‘most averse and unwilling to part 
with their children,’’ as apprenticeship required, because of their 
“fond indulgence and perverse obstinacy.’4 This natural parental 
feeling no doubt persisted, and probably parents who could get along 
without having to ask for public aid in their support, even though 
their manner of living was of low grade, objected to having their 
children taken away from them, especially when the training in 
apprenticeship was poor and the life of the tradesman unsatis- 
factory. In consideration of these facts the officials probably general- 
ly refrained from using force except in cases where the parents were 
notorious for their evil living. 

The interest in the welfare of neglected children which was ex- 
pressed by the legislators certainly was not as strong as that in the 
improvement of industry, and at a time when in England and in 
Virginia the lazssez faire doctrine prevailed in matters of public par- 
ticipation in education this interest could not have had much force 
with the local authorities, particularly when the advantages gained 
by apprenticeship were not obvious. We have an indication of the 
lack of interest in the educational welfare of the poor in the lax 
way in which the endowed schools were managed, and there is a 
similar indication in the fact that an expenditure of public funds for 
education in schools was practically never made. 

Attention has been confined heretofore to a determination of the 
relative number of children bound out in forced apprenticeship. 
Consideration should also be given to various provisions in the in- 
dentures and to the extent to which they were carried out, although 
the fact that relatively few children were bound out lessens the im- 
portance of the matter. As in England, the form of contract used 
was like that in industrial apprenticeship, the master agreeing to 
teach or cause the apprentice to be taught the “‘art, trade, or mystery” 
he was following. During the eighteenth century it was customary, 
even before the passage of laws requiring it, to stipulate in the 
agreement that instruction in reading and writing or ‘‘schooling”’ 
should also be given, although such provision was not made as often 
in the cases of girls as of boys. How faithfully the masters carried 
out their agreements cannot be determined at all exactly. The 


4sHartwell, Chilton, and Blair, The Present State of Virginia (1697), p. 8. 
49Hening, I, 336. 


88 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


supervision of the system of apprenticeship was in the hands of the 
‘county justices, and the court records show that they sometimes 
admonished and punished masters for failure to treat their apprentices 
as the indentures required.®® We may assume that the fear of the 
court or interest in the welfare of their apprentices held a considerable 
share of the masters to their contracts. It seems likely, however, 
that if the provisions for schooling and trade education had been 
customarily held to, a larger number of children would have been 
bound out. 

Several factors which in spite of the provisions in the indentures 
probably tended to lower the quality and the amount of education 
received by poor children in apprenticeship may be mentioned. In 
England the custom was to disregard the educational features in the 
indentures, and this practice must have had some effect in Virginia. 
The fact that the provision of support was the primary motive in 
binding out children suggests that if a master cared for the physical 
needs of his apprentice and did not abuse him, little in the way of 
education might be required of him. The clistom of binding out 
children when they were very young, some years before their masters 
could be expected to pay any attention to their instruction, no doubt 
tended to obscure the educational object. The relatives or friends 
of the children were not of the type to exercise much influence favor- 
able to them, and the apprentices probably were not greatly in- 
terested in the fulfillment of the educational part of the contracts. 
While the number of schools in Virginia increased as time went on, 
the distance of many of the homes from a school must have made it 
difficult very often for the masters to provide instruction in reading 
and writing. There was no flourishing system of industrial ap- 
prenticeship to set standards of trade education, and there was a 
tendency on the part of the masters to set their apprentices to raising 
tobacco to the neglect of their trade instruction. 

The trades to which poor boys were most commonly apprenticed, 
as shown by orders and indentures, were those of carpenter, shoe- 
maker, planter, and blacksmith; but other trades to which they were 
occasionally bound were those of weaver, tailor, cooper, tanner, 
bricklayer, joiner, and wheelwright. The indentures of girls common- 
ly required that they should be taught spinning, sewing, and knitting, 
or “household business.” 

It does not seem to have been the practice for the master to pay 


S°Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, pp. 311-14. 


Parish Apprenticeship 89 


freedom dues or to make gifts to the poor apprentice upon the com- 
pletion of his term of service except in the way of an outfit of clothing 
and a small amount of food which law and custom required even 
though the indenture did not so stipulate. A law of 1705 required 
that at the expiration of the poor orphan apprentice’s period of 
servitude the master should ‘‘pay and allow him in like manner as is 
appointed for servants by indenture or custom,’ and in 1727 this 
provision was made applicable to other poor children. The servants 
were commonly given a barrel of corn and an equipment of clothing. 
Most of the indentures found in the parish records make no require- 
ment of freedom dues, and where there was nothing concerning the 
matter it may be assumed that only the customary food and clothing 
were given. Occasionally, however, the master was required by the 
indenture to give more. In 1707 in St. Paul’s Parish a master 
agreed to pay a girl apprentice ‘Six Hunderd pounds of good sound 
sweet Tobacco in Cash, when she shall become of age.” In 1733 
another master agreed to give to two apprentices, a boy and a girl, 
“unto each of them Five pounds current money and each of them one 
cow and calf.’ 


SUMMARY 


The primary purpose of poor law apprenticeship in colonial | 
Virginia, as in England, was the relief of the public from the costs of | 
maintaining dependent children. A secondary purpose was the up- | 
bringing and education of those who were bound out, but in practice 
the scheme was not looked upon as a device for educating the poor 
generally and it did not reach any large share of the lower class of 
people. For the limited number who were bound out under the law 
it was, considering the conditions, a more or less effective means of 
trade and literary education. 

‘iHening, III, 375. 


2Hening, IV, 212. 
3MS. Vestry Minutes, pp. 16, 58. 


CHAPTER VI 
CONCLUSION 


The foregoing study of public education as conducted by the 
parishes in colonial Virginia has brought out the fact that efforts 
were confined to an’ attempt to provide for the instruction and 
training of the poor. The chief element in the plan outlined in the 
law was a system of compulsory apprenticeship giving trade training 
and schooling to dependent children and to those whose parents were 
negligent or unable because of poverty to give them an education. 
In addition to apprenticeship as a means of trade education, pro- 
vision was made for the establishment of county-parish work schools. 
Custom gave the vestries the right to defray the costs of tuition of 
poor children in private schools in individual 'cases where it seemed de- 
sirable, and late in the colonial period the vestries were allowed by 
statute to establish workhouses and to levy a tax for the support of 
education in them. While endowed schools were not comprehended 
in the scheme of parish education as outlined in the law, the men who 
founded such institutions looked upon them as a part of the pro- 
vision for the poor and commonly gave their administration partially 
or wholly to parish officials. The work of administering the means 
of educating the poor was divided throughout most of the colonial 
period between the county and the parish, but as time went on the 
parish came to have the larger share of the responsibility. 

The scheme of education embracing the means of caring for the 
education of the poor which have been mentioned was in theory 
adequate to secure its object. In practice, however, apprenticeship 
was the only device at all generally used, and most of the children 
bound out in forced apprenticeship were dependents. The endowed 
parish-county schools which were next in importance to apprentice- 
ship were not numerous enough to reach any considerable share of 
the poor children, and they were not managed in such a way as to 
realize their full possibilities. The other means of parish education 
provided for in law or recognized in custom were so rarely used as to 


go 


Conclusion QI 


be negligible. Since the results of our examination of the sources 
bearing on parish education are so largely negative, it might be 
thought that perhaps the county, which shared legal responsibility 
with the parish, was the institution which in practice actually did 
the work. This possibility has been taken into consideration, how- 
ever, and it has been shown that it was only in apprenticeship that . 
the county ever acted independently, and that whether the binding 
out was done by the county or parish officials or by bothin co-operation 
our conclusion that ordinarily only dependents were apprenticed 
holds. Except for the occasional payment of apprenticeship pre- 
miums there was practically no expenditure of public funds for edu- 
cational purposes in colonial Virginia. 

While attention may be called to certain facts to show why there 
was only a small amount of public activity in education in colonial 
Virginia there is not the call for an explanation that there would be 
if the public had participated to a considerable extent. That is, 
there was no factor in the situation which would lead to the pre- 
sumption that more was done than a general conformity to English 
precedents demanded, and that there were reasons for doing less 
than was done in England can readily be seen. The chief interfering 
factors were the wide distribution of the population and the frontier 
conditions which made it difficult to carry out any sort of community 
enterprise. There was not the strong religious demand for the 
teaching of reading which was an essential factor in the development 
of public schools in New England, and the uniformity of belief in the 
principles of the Established Church meant that there was not the 
same interest as there was in England in providing orthodox in- 
struction so as to combat the influence of competing sects. The 
economic interest which was expressed in the legislation dealing with 
workhouses and apprenticeship was not strong enough to overcome 
the difficulties inherent in the industrial system. Philanthropic 
concern in the educational welfare of the poor expressed itself in the 
form of gifts for the establishment of a number of free schools and 
endowments for the payment of tuition for instruction in private 
schools rather than in an effort to secure general public provision for 
them. Whether the undemocratic character of local government 
was a factor interfering with the development of education for the 
poor may be doubted, for there is no evidence of a demand coming 
from the people who would have been benefitted by it. 

When in 1779 Thomas Jefferson undertook his project of es- 


92 Parish Education in Colonial Virginia 


tablishing a scheme of public education in Virginia there was no 
precedent upon which he could depend except the custom of parish 
and county participation in the administration of poor law apprentice- 
ship and endowed schools for the poor. Back of the practice there 
was an idea that the public should be concerned with the education 
of the poor, but there was no general feeling of real public responsi- 
bility and no sense of an obligation to do anything which might 
involve the levying of taxes. While what was done in colonial 
Virginia in the way of public interference in the education of the 
poor may be viewed as a step toward the later development of 
common schools, it probably was an obstacle rather than a help. 
The association of the idea of public education with that of pro- 
vision for the poor alone made it seem natural in the early part of the 
federal period to confine the efforts made to an improvement of 
arrangements for the poor. Such an attempt could not have the 
enthusiastic backing of any class. 


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Burn, Richard. The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer, London, 1772. 

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Dalton, Michael. The Country Justice. London, 1746. 

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93 


94 Parish Education tn Colontal Virginia 


Dettingen in Prince William, 1748-1802; Alexandria. 

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BIOGRAPHY 


Beveridge, A. J. The Life of John Marshall. Vol. I. New York, 1916. 

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Pryor, Mrs. Roger A. The Mother of Washington and Her Times. New York, 
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Rives, W. C. Life and Times of James Madison. Boston, 1859. 


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